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Academic dishonesty in universities has become one of the most revealing indicators of deeper problems in our higher education system today, raising questions about the need to reform KPIs, incentives, and institutional culture. On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with independent scholar Dr Sharifah Munirah Alatas, author of the new book ‘Ivory Tower Reform: A Vision for Higher Education in Malaysia’. Dr Munirah has spent over two decades in academia, and was appointed to the National Unity Advisory Council.
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00:00Music
00:00Hello and good evening, I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to Consider This.
00:14This is the show where we want you to consider and then we consider what you know of the news of the day.
00:19Universities are often described as being in crisis, squeezed by rankings, funding pressures and changing expectations.
00:27But crisis talk can easily slide into nostalgia or into despair.
00:34So tonight we want to ask a different question.
00:36What does reform realistically mean now and how can Malaysian universities reclaim their public purpose?
00:44Joining me on the show is Dr. Sharifah Munira Al-Atas who is the author of the new book, Ivory Tower Reform, a vision for higher education in Malaysia.
00:55Dr. Munira is also a veteran academic.
00:59She spent more than two decades in academia and was recently appointed to the National Unity Advisory Council.
01:06Dr. Munira, welcome to the show. It's good to have you back on.
01:10And, you know, we often have covered the topic of reform for higher education.
01:16And I think that the challenges that Malaysian public universities face are already quite well known.
01:21So talk to me about why you felt like this was the moment to write this book.
01:26What does the book add to the conversation that maybe we still haven't grappled with seriously?
01:33Thank you, Melissa, for inviting me. I'm really pleased to be here.
01:39There are so many reasons to have this book, to publish this book.
01:44It's just that the problems we grapple with in the university, in higher education, to a larger extent, has been going on endlessly for decades.
01:58We write about it. We give comments in the newspapers.
02:03We come on TV like this.
02:08But I find that there have not been any resources that one can turn to to get a specific volume where, you know, from page to page,
02:22you can turn through, leaf through and access the nitty gritty of what the problems are.
02:27Now, I felt that, well, me and my co-editors, we all, three of us, felt that it was necessary to put together the work done by Pergerakan Tenaga Academic Malaysia.
02:40Gerak.
02:40Gerak. We have actually been at the forefront of higher education advocacy.
02:46And the book is, mind you, not just a conglomeration of our media statements.
02:54It has a lot of added commentary, a lot of citations, footnotes, which enhance the discussion.
03:02So we've brought it up to date in terms of what the ensuing problems are, but also to add on suggestions of how to solve them.
03:15And maybe given a more context to the problems rather than just focusing on politics.
03:23I mean, there is national politics that's affecting education, but there's also global politics.
03:30So there's that, too, that's in the book.
03:32I think my ultimate aim, personally, has been to allow the information in this book to be a national conversation.
03:45Okay.
03:45Because a lot of the problems in education are focused on the schools, secondary and primary schools.
03:52But when it comes to university, then we're talking about, it's very ethnic-related.
04:00It's very problems with funding, who gets in, who gets deliberately shut out.
04:07But there are internal problems that we don't talk about.
04:10There are internal problems with the academics themselves, academic dishonesty.
04:15It's silenced, or rather, it's not being talked about.
04:21So the book actually refers to a lot of the dishonesty, the academic misdemeanors that take place in university.
04:32So I'm curious to, the title was one that kind of stood out to me, Ivory Tower Reform.
04:40Ivory Tower, which suggests to me a disconnect, maybe a privileged insularity.
04:47And I wanted to ask you about that.
04:49If it's true, if that's what you're suggesting through the title,
04:52then which parts of society is it that universities are failing to engage with?
04:57All right. Thank you, Melissa, for bringing that up, because there was, even at the launch this past weekend,
05:05there was some comments about not, some quarters not liking the use of the term Ivory Tower.
05:14Oh, okay. It hit a soft spot.
05:16But let me explain the meaning, actually.
05:19Ivory Tower actually refers, it's a metaphor that actually originated in the 18th century in Europe,
05:28in the Romantic era of Europe.
05:31It was basically directed at artists who wanted to extricate themselves from society briefly,
05:39for a brief period of time, to sort of recoup and generate their own, sort of, to become,
05:49to reach a stage of, a state of nirvana.
05:52Enlightenment.
05:53Enlightenment. And then rejoin society with their enlightened state and their enlightened work of art.
06:01So I was, together with Garap Budaya, we decided, well, we'll use the term,
06:09because the metaphor actually has both a positive and a negative meaning.
06:14I didn't know the positive.
06:15So the positive part was the 18th century one, and the negative part was the meaning developed post-World War II,
06:23when Ivory Tower became a self-centred, selfish attitude towards society,
06:30and only my idea counts, and we're going to push it.
06:35And it also equates with mediocrity, at least in the context of Malaysia now.
06:42Everyone now uses Ivory Tower in inverted commas,
06:45because it connotes, yes, you're no longer, you're a mediocre setup.
06:52So you used the term academic dishonesty a little bit earlier.
06:57I want to know, when you use that phrase, what behaviours are you referring to?
07:04Well, for instance, there are many aspects of academic dishonesty.
07:13One that's very popular is plagiarism.
07:16But in the context of Malaysia, we often talk about plagiarism in the context of students.
07:26Students who falsify data or cut and paste to present or to submit their assignments.
07:34Students who cut and paste.
07:38Generative AI.
07:39Yeah, that too, which is a sore point with many of us.
07:43But again, we focus on students.
07:47For me, and what we discuss a lot in the book,
07:50is academic dishonesty among the lecturers themselves.
07:55And this is a conversation that is not rampant or is not widespread in the media.
08:03Academics themselves are cutting and pasting.
08:06We are very aware of falsification of data because uppermost in our minds is we need to satisfy KPIs.
08:15We need to produce the quantity that is required for promotion.
08:20We would do anything to get our names on a title of a journal article.
08:27So, you know, I've written down about eight versions of academic dishonesty.
08:35Plagiarism is one.
08:37There's citation stacking.
08:39Paper mills, whereby you actually can go to an organization or a company and ask them, pay for it.
08:47Ask them to write, you know, I want, this month I would like to pay for four articles.
08:53Please write it.
08:54These are paper mills.
08:55You can, you can basically get your articles written for you and then you submit it and you are, wow,
09:02you move up the promotion ladder quickly.
09:06Okay.
09:06Paper mills.
09:07So plagiarism, citation stacking, paper mills.
09:10And there's bullying, of course, where a senior academic would, would bully a junior academic into putting his or her name on their publication.
09:21Let's say, or even a PhD student who needs some publications to get through the degree.
09:28The advisor would say, or even a junior, a secondary advisor would say, I need my name on it without doing a single, writing a single word or contributing.
09:42And these are, would you describe them as commonplace practices?
09:46Yes.
09:46And in my experience over the decades that I've been in the university system, yes, it is commonplace.
09:55Okay.
09:55To what extent are these, the issue of academic dishonesty, a problem of individual ethics?
10:03And to what extent is it a problem produced by institutional structures, institutional incentives, the publish or perish metrics, promotions you talked about, the KPIs?
10:16How much?
10:17So I'm wondering because is this considered a moral failure or is it masking something more?
10:24Is there a structural explanation for why this seems to be rampant in our universities?
10:29Well, it's a combination of moral failure when we're dealing with our top university administrators like the VC and the deputy vice chancellor who's in charge of academic affairs.
10:45I mean, there is a moral failure there, but of course they are driven by a more structural problem.
10:52And the structural problem is not merely a domestic Malaysian generated problem.
10:59It is tied in with the global system.
11:03Okay.
11:03And this is where we may not talk too much about it, but global ranking of universities has a role to play in this.
11:12Universities move up the ranking ladder depending on how the research output, how often or how many articles that that university has produced in Q1 journals, for instance, or how much research money is coming in to a specific area or theme of research, a specific discipline.
11:37But discipline, where is the money being donated from to generate this research?
11:43I mean, there are so many different forms of grading a university performance and it falls onto the academics.
11:53You know, they are pushed to publish, pushed to do research.
11:56It's incorporated into their KPIs.
11:59Yes.
11:59And that leads to some academic dishonest behavior.
12:04Not some.
12:05I mean, rampant because, I mean, it's become a very arrogant way to, it's become an issue to boast about.
12:14At meetings, you will find academics saying, oh, yes, I have now 30, I'm supervising 30 PhD students.
12:20I mean, this is unheard of 30 years ago when a full professor who retires at the age of 70, I'm speaking about the U.S. or in the U.K.
12:32My experience is in the U.S., by the time they retire at 70 years old, they may have supervised eight PhD students.
12:40And to them, or 10 at most, there's no such thing as 30.
12:45But you see, nowadays, KPIs also reflect, PhD supervision is a reflection on, it goes, it counts towards the KPI.
12:57So the more you supervise, the better you are in academic.
13:01The more you publish, the better you are quality, they think.
13:05So you can churn out half-baked articles, it doesn't matter.
13:10I mean, we have a very clear example, a recent example of Romans learning shipbuilding from the Malays.
13:19I mean, we have academics who are churning out very low-grade, mediocre articles, and surprisingly, they are published by Q1 journals.
13:31So there is a structural, a clear structural problem.
13:35Okay.
13:36So talk to me about what mechanisms actually work in reducing academic dishonesty, if you were to look at both structural and cultural.
13:47For one, as, and I'm happy the book is finally out, because we do talk extensively about being heard, about voicing your problems or your unease with the system, voicing it out.
14:05I mean, if one or two stragglers do it, it's easy for the administration or the elites out there who have political connections, it's easy to shut you up, you know, to fire you or throw you in, what's the word, cold storage.
14:25But if you have, you know, whole departments doing it, rejecting the system or saying, no, I will not publish three articles a year, one is enough.
14:37I mean, just giving an example.
14:38If there are more voices to protest this, I think change will slowly take place.
14:46It's already happening in the West, in many universities in the US and the UK and even in Germany and France.
14:54It's just not happening here because there is still a feeling of apathy.
14:59Is it apathy or is it fear of the repercussions?
15:04Is it fear of being left behind?
15:06The pressures of promotions, not meeting, I mean, everyone thinks about what they have to lose if they don't do well at their jobs.
15:15Families they have to take care of, the commitments they have in life.
15:21Does reform depend on individual bravery alone?
15:26Because I fear that's not scalable.
15:28It has to be that we think about how we change institutions.
15:32If we put it on individuals, the onus then shifts to it being, you know, acts of personal sacrifice over wanting us or calling out for a system to change.
15:45Again, I can only give my experience.
15:48I think I'm a living example of not being promoted, of being vocal, of being satisfied with the fact that I didn't succumb to so much of the dishonesty that was going on.
16:07I went my own pace.
16:10Of course, there might be some out there saying I don't have the ambition, but I think that's gravely wrong because I'm here sitting with you.
16:21You know, we've just published the book and there are two more coming out by myself, my individually.
16:29It's how we conceptualize what success is.
16:33What success is and to me success as an academic has been understanding the problems and now speaking about it and bringing up awareness that we need more voices to change it eventually.
16:50Of course, there are some difficulties with changing because we have a political structure that's difficult to overcome.
16:57On the other hand, there are other aspects of it that we can change.
17:02For instance, the KPI system or even the ranking system.
17:05The global rankings that I know this is a huge topic, but talk to me why there is this obsession over global rankings.
17:15Who is most obsessed with global rankings?
17:17Who does it serve and clearly it trickles down to KPIs of the faculty, of the academics themselves.
17:26They're the ones carrying this burden, but for whom?
17:30For whom does it benefit?
17:32Okay, the obsession is us, universities who want the recognition.
17:39The public and the parents of young graduates from high school who want to get into university, they are obsessed with it.
17:47But the blame, the 100% blame goes to these few companies that are sitting pretty in Europe and the United States who have devised this method, this gaming system of ranking universities because it's a money-making business.
18:06So they have made it clear that to be ranked, you've got to go through this process, pay this amount of money, universities do pay to get ranked, and it is a year in and year out daily, I mean year annual, I would say it's a gaming system.
18:31It doesn't really reflect the quality of a university, there are many universities who are opting out.
18:38But my problem or what we have discussed in the book is a more crucial one.
18:47We criticise it a lot, but I think there's a lot of people who don't really understand it.
18:53And I'm calling for more clarity about it and to get people to talk about it more because we need to find alternatives.
19:06We can't do that unless we understand what we want to move away from and how to substitute it because whether we like it or not, universities want to have a reputation.
19:18Of course, they have decades old practice, right?
19:21Yes. And I mean, many old universities, centuries old in the West, for instance, have a reputation because they have a few anchor scholars who have given the name to that university.
19:37I mean, you have the Noam Chomsky's of many universities or the Edward Said's of many universities.
19:43We have Wanggang Wu's and Said Hussein Alatas. Yes, we do.
19:48But how many do we have that are big enough to give, to anchor the reputation of our universities?
19:56And not just in Malaysia, but I mean regionally, even regionally.
20:01Who do we have? You know, so this is, this is the problem.
20:05So this is ties, it ties into the, the ranking discussion.
20:10Wow. OK, so I think we kind of have discussed how we got here, but I do want to focus some time on what can be done to move forward from this point on.
20:22So you talked about maybe speaking up more, being more vocal about some of the underhand practices or the unreasonable KPIs that have been put into place.
20:35What else would you advocate for in terms of reform that would make a difference, particularly for the people who are still in the university setting?
20:50I do worry sometimes that there's so much emphasis on the challenges and the decline of our public universities that it risks demoralizing the people who are still there, who can make a difference, who can change.
21:02So how do we critique the system honestly without undermining those who can make a difference, who may want to make a difference?
21:10OK, that's an excellent question and a very important one because there's no point to always criticize and not, and just be a wet blanket that that's wrong.
21:19The thing is, I would say for those of, who are really interested, those who have a conscience, who are still serving in the universities, start to organize conferences, small forums, discussions, reading book clubs on, on the problem of the universities.
21:39And it's not just the Malaysian problem. We have an identity crisis, the purpose of the university. I mean, it's being questioned globally.
21:48But of course, there are reasons for that. But in the Malaysian context, let's start small. We need to have more. We need to speak about it. We need to debate about it.
22:01We need not condemn the government all the time, but just get a conversation going, a regular conversation going about the problems we're facing, about academic dishonesty, for instance.
22:14Start with that. About clocking in, for instance. Why are we so against clocking in?
22:21There's a deeper reason. There's a deeper reason for that because it ties in to the meaning of the university and the role of the university in society and the role of academics for society.
22:35Well, maybe I should have begun with this question. What do you see as the role of universities, the core public responsibility that universities owe society in 2025?
22:48All right. At the risk of sounding rhetorical or even syrupy, I would say that the main aim of the university is the pursuit of truth.
23:02All right. Whatever that truth is, your truth might be not my truth. But that's the point. The debate is what is the space that is offered by universities.
23:14We are a space. We are supposed to be a space for debate, for discussion, for critical thinking, for drawing out possibilities, alternative approaches, different angles to one problem.
23:31It doesn't mean that just because you understand different angles, the whole system is going to collapse. No.
23:38No. That's the purpose of the university. It's very basic.
23:42Right. I don't know at what point you started to notice the decline in our universities.
23:51You've had many years of experience in academia.
23:54But now that you are removed from the university setting, what responsibility do senior academics like yourself have in helping shape the culture of universities today to, I guess, lower the risks for those who want to speak out?
24:14Lower the risk. Lower the risk. That's a good statement to say. Lower the risk. Yes.
24:22I would say my role now that I'm out, I'm doing what I'm doing, as you can see.
24:31You know, I speak up about it. I make public statements about things that are going wrong.
24:38I will call whoever is out who is dishonest.
24:40But I also, in my writing and in my talks, I do always insist on the balanced approach.
24:50There's always a good side and a bad side to things.
24:54So, yes, I can criticize a particular public university for not retracting a specific journal.
25:00And by the way, that journal still hasn't been retracted.
25:04I can criticize that.
25:06But I will also give due credit to the university for many good things it's done.
25:11So, to me, this is something my father always taught us.
25:17You know, not everything is bad in society.
25:19There's always the good and the bad, and we must mention it, because that's the role of being, of taking a moral stand on anything.
25:32It's to give due credit where its credit's due.
25:35So, I don't know if I've answered your question, but I think basically me, as now somebody who's retired,
25:42I'm really not retired, because I'm still in touch with what I'm impassioned with.
25:49The work continues.
25:50The work continues.
25:51Yeah.
25:52And I think many younger scholar activists, I think, are happy that the path for them has been made a little less difficult.
26:04I hope so.
26:05I hope so.
26:07For your generation and for those who walk behind you.
26:11Thank you so much for being on the show with me today.
26:13I appreciate your insights.
26:15That's all the time we have for you on this episode of Consider This.
26:18I'm Melissa Idris, signing off for the evening.
26:20Thank you so much for watching, and good night.
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