A reply to The Star's article on "Academia call-up for ex-top guns" (Published in The Star 12/8/2006)

Academia call-up for ex-top guns

As a scholar and teacher, I strongly support the content of the above headlines published by The Star on the 11th August 2006. I can draw from my own experience as a lecturer in the UK that increased collaboration between universities and industries can be beneficial in many ways. Some of the main benefits for students include relevance of theories through practical examples, knowledge of industry issues, industrial placement and job opportunities; and for academics, the benefits include potential funding opportunities, research access and relevance of research for practitioners. While most universities in the UK actively seek collaboration with managers in the industry, the process tends to be selective and formal in terms of ensuring that there are mutual benefits for the university, industry and students. In brief, this process operates under the Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) scheme, with the main priority on knowledge and technology transfer among the aforementioned three parties. But, as far as the idea of recruiting experienced civil servants or managers to lecture university students, this is not a common practice particularly not for top UK universities. From the university’s perspective, the main difficulties of this idea are: (a) whilst practitioners bring with them the wealth of knowledge about hands-on experience, there is a need to blend pedagogical needs with theories and achieve a balance of theoretical insights, application of knowledge and evaluation models for students self-development; (b) practitioners are concerned with current and/or ‘live’ problems whereas academics could be engaged in either application or basic research. This presents two incompatibilities – the first is that most practical problem or solution is context-specific and future graduates need to acquire the ability to bridge this gap of applying conceptual models to a new or different situation. Secondly, theories without substance are also problematic and academics need to engage industry experts for enriching students’ learning experience and for better conceptualisation of real-world dynamics. And (c) the environment is constantly changing, what used to work in practice may not be the case for future graduates (managers) and hands-on solutions need to consistently put to test in empirical research. This could limit the role of industry experts, where there is a need to acquire research skills, and to scientifically measure and generalise real-world phenomenon. Thus, it is not surprising that the British higher education coined the idea of KTP in order to encourage collaboration between universities and industries. I am sure that Datuk Mustapa Mohamed would have considered the above for raising the Higher Education standards and employability of graduates.