IN this column I wish to outline my idea for a university for Sabah and another one for Sarawak specifically for their own people. This 3,000-strong student population will have quality education at the degree level for Sabahan and Sarawakians … for free!
Impossible? Well … walk with me through my idea and decide for yourself. The universities for Sabahans and Sarawakians are not only free but the students produced will be more rounded and the academics produce research and writings that directly affect the development of both nations.
I have lost full confidence in the manner in which the Semenanjung public universities are run. The public university academics do not care much about helping to develop society but keep on developing their own selfish selves. Billions of ringgit have been spent on research but hardly any seem to affect the intelligence or physical quality of life of the people and the environment.
Have we solved the dengue problem? The drug problem? The household debt issue? Housing? Education for all including urban poor and the stateless children? Have academics helped to develop society to be more aware or more accepting of ideas of living in harmony? I don’t think so. The universities help only themselves.
For my idea of the universities for Sabah and for Sarawak, this attitude of self-serving universities shall change. My motto is the ‘University for the Community and the Community as part of the University’. If the community fails to develop with the universities, both universities should close. No two ways about it.
Firstly, the administration of the two universities must be fully democratic. Not like the Semenanjung-led public universities which are mostly feudalistic. The vice-chancellor controls all and is basically … God. In this type of management, the deans of faculties are merely glorified clerks instead of visionaries. The academics are the middle class answering to the authoritarian rule of the registrar and the executives. The peasants are the students.
Not so for my ideas for Sabah and Sarawak universities. Each faculty shall be empowered fully to chart its own focus research areas, its own promotion criteria, and its own money generation consultancy. The vice-chancellor will be called the secretary to the university and simply manages the requirements put up by the faculties.
Each faculty will be led by the dean and a board of experts from civil society, politics, academia, and professionals. This board of experts is the think-tank of the faculty. The experts will deliberate on the needed research areas and focus, as well as community development agendas for the nations of Sabah and Sarawak, proposing them to the academics to operationalise the research methodology and writings to achieve the required vision.
The academics then turn many of these ideas into student assignments and projects that would put them out into industry, professions, and community to collect the data and experience, as well as the network to achieve the vision. In this manner, the university directly affects the development of society in an active manner.
Students will be given the proper tools to survive the professional- and knowledge-based worlds but they will also be free to form their own opinions and life directions or with their own groups and organisations. The students will not be rated purely on academics but also on their ability to organise, fulfil tasks set by their own agendas, and provide innovative ideas and solutions to solve societal issues. The subjects learned must have direct bearing on the environmental, societal industrial, and economic contexts of the nations of Sabah and Sarawak.
The academics will be promoted not purely based on the number of journals published by international bodies like the Semenanjung-led public universities. The Sabah and Sarawak universities will have KPIs that directly impact society in all of aspects of progress. Projects that actually provide significant change to society’s values, attitudes, economic conditions, and environmental consciousness will earn major points for promotion.
Publications will be secondary to these societal projects. The projects can be architecture-based, engineering-based, social science-based or scientific-based, but they must all have direct impact and affect change on the target social group or environmental areas. Publications of the results of these projects in books, media articles, and public attended conferences will be the major promotion factor for the academics.
When I look at the CVs of professors in architecture in international universities, these academics do not publish in the Scopus journals but mostly in local journals and their acknowledgement of expertise is by the local communities, professions, and interest groups in their specific localised projects as well as research.
The campus designs of public universities led by Semenanjung are an exercise of complete wastefulness and unsustainability. With a sprawling planning principle that glorifies the exorbitant mosques and chancellery as feudal statements of control, much energy, time, and fuel is lost in travelling by students and staff. I propose that the Sabah and Sarawak campuses be modelled on a compact and sustainable planning idea much like the design of Taylors University Lakeside Campus in Subang Jaya. Not only is it unpretentious, it sets an exciting work-living-study-play environment that is unprecedented in Malaysia.
I would make the student union the focus of the campus, where the offices of students clubs and political parties reside complete with their own cabinet and parliamentary spaces. The student union would also have all the recreational spaces like movie theatres, food courts, bus terminal, bowling alleys, and a courtyard for student demonstrations and rallies, as well as ‘academic pasar malam’ with food, books, lectures, music, and outdoor acting places.
About 50 per cent of the teaching staff will be allocated a three-bedroom apartment at a modest rental. About 50 per cent of the student will have accommodation on campus. The campus will take up only 10 acres of land with high rise towers and mixed development concept. Trees and water elements must exist to cool the atmosphere and create a spiritual sense of place for study, networking, and contemplation. The chancellery will be relegated to a block of office undistinguished buildings.
An ecumenical centre will provide space for prayers and meditation for all faiths. There will be no massive gateways for security guards to man. The building blocks are connected by a sheltered passage, which can intertwine with the city at every branch, nook, and corner. The university in the city and the city in the university.
How can this type of university sustain itself financially? A 3,000-strong student population at a ratio of 1:30 requires only 100 academic staff to run the campus. At RM6,000 to RM10,000 a month salary scale, it requires RM8 million a year. With utilities and support staff, this figure can be a conservative RM12 million. With an endowment of RM200 million when the oil royalty comes in from the ratified MA63, the Sabah and Sarawak campuses can each use RM50 million to build a compact campus design. The balance of RM150 million will go into an endowment investment account set up by the two nations that would annually provide a subsistence of RM15 million almost perpetually.
The students pay only for room and board. The university can make a lot of money with room and board packages of RM300 a month for each student. Thus, for each semester of five months, parents only pay RM1,500 for room and board. The campus shall require that 50 per cent of the student population live on campus, which would bring a revenue of RM450,000 a month. If the profit margin is 30 per cent, the university can collect RM150,000 monthly. The revenue can support some modest research funding but most research should be sponsored by the various agencies of the nations of Sabah and Sarawak, as well as the industries and professions.
The RM40 billion 1MDB scandal illustrates how much money has been wasted. It is not only a tragedy of missing money for the people’s development but it is also a tragedy that such leaders involved are still respected by the Malays under their ideology of the ‘halal rasuah’. An RM200 million endowment for our children’s future is small change in the pockets of corrupt leaders of a ruling party to spend buying votes or a night at a casino. It is also loose change for the wives of corrupt leaders shopping for handbags and exotic diamond rings.
The nations of Sabah and Sarawak must be vigilant in protecting the oil and logging money soon to be coming in for the most important investment of the nations … the future of our children. I have shown that this is not a dream but a highly probable reality.
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