Foreign Universities taking us for a ride?

A little belated but a reader alerted me to this rather bitter letter published in Malaysiakini complaining about how a foreign university set up in Malaysia is milking the Malaysian system for all its worth. I'll reproduce the letter below and then comment it.

Foreign universities giving it to us real good
Disgruntled Former Staff | Apr 14, 08 4:29pm

The general public is not aware that a certain Australian university which has a campus here has little interest in developing the nation's intellectual capital. Over the last year, it's hidden agenda is to steal Malaysia's wealth and brain power, contributing very little to the nation while delegating distinguished locals to insignificant supporting roles while harvesting their intellectual work for the benefit of Australia.

The current Malaysian government unwittingly abets in this activity by opening opportunities to these foreigners that are denied in any self-respecting nation, including South Africa. Malaysia has thus become the laughing stock among academics in the know, from Melbourne to Johannesburg.

Consider the following: An Australian with limited experience and a spotty academic record has been appointed vice-chancellor and president of this university, bypassing many distinguished local academics with far better academic calibre and experience within this university's Malaysian campus. He is given a five-year contract, rather than the customary three years. Why?

Because he has promised the Australians that he will harvest Malaysian money, in the millions, in addition to the hefty 16% tuition fees that Australians already take (steal?) in the form of royalties. This additional money (billions) comes from Malaysia's vast research funds. Malaysia is dumb enough to give these so-called foreign professors access to these funds - just look at Mosti's website of experts - it is infested with the names of foreigners who are supposed to tap international research funds for the benefit of Malaysia. Instead, they sit there and ‘collaborate’ with locals - meaning that they insist on locals doing all the work while they publish jointly, and get a harvest of these funds meant to develop local academicians and researchers. Why are foreigners allowed to access these funds meant for Malaysians, paid for with Malaysian tax money? (Example 1 of ‘Malaysia Bodoh’).

In his maiden lecture, the VC mentioned above called for his university’s academics to work ‘collaboratively’ with Australian academics and also pushes for ‘linkages with local universities’. Why? Because he sees this as a means to access local government research funds, funds from private companies and international funds that may be available to distinguished local universities and then share the loot with Australia and get due credit. Of course, the Australian university couldn't care less as long as a fat stream of money flows into its cash-strapped coffers. To a question of when Australia is going to send money due to international publications by local academics (in Australian universities, a set amount of money is provided when the staff publishes in approved international journals), this man refused to pursue the matter. He must be asked to issue a public statement on this money owed to the Malaysian campus and a deadline of when the money will be forthcoming.

To stop this rot, the Malaysian government should immediately revamp its policy on foreign professors at branch campuses - these professors should be required to bring in research money from international research funds (as should befit a ‘professor’) and only play mentoring roles to locals. Mosti should never allow these foreigners of foreign branch campuses to register in their database; they must only be able to collaborate with special permission. In such collaborations, top-level journal publications must be mandatory - otherwise, they get away with dismal work that can easily be accomplished by anyone. In short, not addressing this situation leads to theft of local research funds to foreign shores in the name of ‘education’.

The foreign VC in question has pressured long-serving locals to resign as a result of them bringing attention to his dubious policies. He insists on rewriting original Australian policies that promote openness and transparency to obscure the facts and hide these dastardly deeds. Malaysia has no laws to address this (Eg. 2 of Malaysia Bodoh). Again, the Australian university doesn't care as long as money keeps flowing. As long as its financial interests are protected, to hell with its ‘equal employment opportunities’ policy - which is only for Australia.

All Western nations (US, UK, Australia) have strong policies on employment, insisting that foreigners are hired only when qualified locals are not available. Foreign universities in Malaysia freely hire foreigners who barely meet the grade (from the perspective of academic credentials and work experience) while better qualified locals are neglected, or made to play relatively minor leadership roles (Malaysia obediently issues work permits, Example 3 of ‘Malaysia Bodoh’).

Again, these foreigners care little about quality of teaching; textbooks are late in many cases across all the schools and often teaching material from Australia is not well-planned. As such, there is no benefit of giving these foreign, professional beggars these top posts. Thanks to our stupidity, rather than their cleverness.

First of all, this creates a healthy outflow of funds to foreign lands. Secondly, it helps them enact more of their own rules and regulations to increase this flow of money to Australia and wherever else. Thirdly, it forces locals to keep their mouth shut or get lost - in their own country. Since this VC took over, a growing stream of resignations from locals has taken place. The salaries and fringe benefits paid to these foreigners goes into millions! This is the kind of money US, UK and Australia save by only giving visas to foreigners who can deliver value. We should do the same by insisting these holders of top leadership posts and senior professorial positions bring in research money from sources abroad.

All of this is the result of the polices of the former PM. The result is an abortion of human capital development, not to mention the outflow of government and taxpayers’ funds.

We hope that the new Selangor government can initiate full investigations into these activities and track where all this research money goes to. Given that this university enjoys access to government-funded scholars, government-based research funds (formerly Irpa, now eScience, etc) as well as money from privately-funded students (whose parents are taxpayers), this foreign university must report in a true and transparent manner all its sources of funds and the subsequent use of these funds (including who gets both internal and external research funds and how these funds are allocated).

First of all, this letter is written by a 'Former Disgruntled Worker' so obviously he or she (I suspect that the person is a 'he') has an axe to grind which warns me to read the contents of the letter with a pinch of salt. The letter writer is obviously not trying to write an objective assessment of this foreign university.

Secondly, it should not be surprising to many that one of the main reasons why these foreign universities set up shop in Malaysia is to earn revenue from the local market. Why else would a university like Nottingham and Sunway set up shop in a place like Malaysia if not to take advantage of the fact that they can derive revenue from such a move? With shrinking subsidies and funding from their respective governments and a restriction on the number of foreigners which they can accept to their home campuses, these universities have done the next best thing, which is to expand to overseas markets and increase their revenue base.

Local students benefit because they can obtain a Nottingham or Monash degree without incurring the cost of studying overseas and these colleges benefit by being able to earn revenue from the local market.

In addition, the academic standards set in the branches of these foreign universities are not noticeably lower than their home campuses. The proportion of PhD holders in the Malaysian campuses of these universities are much higher than other private colleges and university colleges (although probably lower than their home campuses). While the courses available might be slightly less than their home campuses, I'm quite sure that the teaching standards and syllabi won't differ by much.

And of course, these universities also provide employment to Malaysians either in the academic / research fields or in other fields associated with the activities of these universities.

Thirdly, I want to address the issue of foreign academics in these universities 'milking' the system by obtaining MOSTI funds via doing research with local academics. I think there is some validity in that criticism in that a case can be made that the MOSTI funds (through IRPA and other grants) should be reserved for Malaysians only since Malaysian taxpayers are funding these grants and their purpose should be to boost the research capacity of local academics.

For example, many scholarships and grants in the US, which is a pretty liberal place when it comes to funding research, is only open to US citizens or green card holders including the prestigious National Science Foundation scholarships and grants.

But what I found surprising was the fact that the letter writer accused the foreign academics of piggy backing on the efforts of local academics. If this is the case, why should the local academics want to collaborate with these foreigners in the first place unless they had something to offer to the project in question? Put it this way, if I were asked to collaborate with a foreign academic who could not bring anything to the table and needed my help to obtain funds for the project, I would definitely not agree to such a collaboration.

In academic circles, the practice of more senior people piggy backing on the efforts of their more junior counterparts is a common practice. But usually, these senior academics bring something to the table - funding, past experience and knowledge on the subject matter, credibility when it comes to publishing and so on. If local academics allow their foreign counterparts to piggy back on their efforts with the knowledge that they bring nothing to the table, then I would put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the local academics for letting this happen.

Do I think that the branches of foreign universities in Malaysia are perfect? From from it. I think there are many loopholes which they exploit which they would not be able to do in their home campuses. But I think this is a process of capacity building. Just like how private colleges and university colleges are being pressured to introduce research activities into their campuses, the branches of foreign universities will have to do the same, if they are not doing this already. In fact, I see the potential of a healthy competition existing between our local public universities and the Malaysian branches of these foreign universities in terms of research.

In fact, I think that the branches of these foreign universities provides more rigorous academic training, teaching and standards compared to other private colleges and universities as well as some of our public universities.