Keep politics out of higher education, say academics

Academics say Malaysia’s higher education sector must be separated from partisan politics in order to move forward and produce better quality lecturers and graduates, writes Faye Kwan for Free Malaysia Today.

Former academic Andrew Aeria said more needed to be done before the country’s graduates were able to compete globally. “We are in a hole as far as higher education is concerned. We need to seriously stop digging, we need to separate partisan politics from the serious politics of getting our higher education system and priorities right,” he said at an online conference on 5 December.

He also said that, while university statutes existed, most university academics had little to no knowledge of these statutes which outline the responsibilities of all university officers and bodies. Many administrators also tended to ignore the statutes and failed to abide by them, he said.
Full report on the Free Malaysia Today site