Wednesday, August 14, 2013

MAKING OF A UNIVERSITY

MAS MOHD DARBY
What makes a good university? In the modern world today, a good university is a world-class university. Jamil Salmi, an Education Economist at the World Bank Washington DC, described world-class university is developing the capacity to compete in the global tertiary education marketplace through the acquisition, adaptation and creation of advanced knowledge (Salmi, 2009). Becoming a member of the elite group of world-class university is not something one achieve as self-declaration.  With their rich endowments and storied histories, a select group of Ivy League universities including Harvard, Stanford, MIT or Yale, along with Oxford and Cambridge in the U.K., as well as the University of Tokyo, are routinely place in the top 10 spots of prestigious lists of world-class universities. (Goodaal, 2006).
In reference to the definition above, University today is not just about quality of learning and research at tertiary education. A good university is founded on a good tradition where the establishment of the internal learning culture is being uphold throughout the years by the current students as well as former students. World-class universities must have internal culture. A university is not well known on how many first class graduates they produced each year, but on how strong their culture and tradition being nurtured each year; along with how many industry-driven research are being produced. For example university must be a place of intelligence and love towards education. The university must foster its academic responsibility by encouraging research and academic freedom in an environment  where there is full of ‘love’ that it attract talent and retain it. 
Salmi in his report emphasizes three most important factors that attribute to world-class universities as 1) a high concentration of talents (critical mass of outstanding faculty and top students) 2) Abundance resources to offer a rich learning environment and to conduct advanced research 3) favorable governance (management) that encourages strategic vision, innovation and flexibility, that enable colleges to make decisions and manage resources without being encumbered by bureaucracy (Salmi, 2009). In another study, Fujia listed four elements of world-class universities: 1) Tangible assets (good building and infrastructure), 2) human resource (first-class faculty, students and administrative staff) 3) university culture (the love for faculty and the love for students) 4) operational system where educationist, not administrators run the university, educationist must enjoy autonomy, rights of independent thinking and free expression. It should operate independently and exercise democratic management in accordance with the law (Fujia, 2003).
There must be a good correlation between university policy, academic freedom and academic responsibility. There must be freedom for both faculty and students to discuss issues and questions without fear of being terminated or deprived.  Freedom must be given to faculty to continuously conduct research and improve academic capabilities, not bugged with administrative paper works, taking attendance, registration and non-value added task or routines. This kills academic tradition and deprived faculty and professors from knowledge creation and education development. The university must dedicate to encouraging and nurturing a community of academics in which the learning and perpetuation of knowledge acquisition of every member may flourish, if not forever but for a long period of time of their lives. An institution of higher learning must not be managed like a regime military institution and a continuity of a school administrative operation. An institution of higher learning will fail to attract the best brain if it treats its faculty and professors as school teachers or military cadre. 
If an institution of higher learning emphasis simply on paper qualification, this will develop students who will go against ethical behavior to get A's and to the extend of stealing exam papers and answer sheets to obtain good results on paper. In other words, learning in university is not about achieving a piece of paper, but students must go through the ‘campus climate’ experience in order to prepare them in the next journey of the outside world, thus helping the university to develop world-class talents.
It must be reminded that the mission of university education is to bring out the best of every students. Thus, to become a competitive and good university, it must offer outstanding undergraduate experiences to the students. A ‘campus climate’ provide a good platform for student to ‘think out of the box’ and prepare them for academic adventure and challenging learning experiences that enable students to achieve a shared learning outcomes, in addition to superior achievements to develop skills and knowledge in their areas of studies. Students will fail to be groomed as graduates if they are continuously ‘spoon fed’ with rigid classroom syllabus and templates. They must go through intellectually challenging experiences, be independent in learning, referring to faculty for advise, conducting library research and not provided with revision sheets or notes to memorise. The campus climate experience is the most valuable experience for a graduate as compared to lectures and memorizing of notes for examination. 
Mark Yudof, President of University California listed few points of what makes a university great: quality teaching, accessible opportunity, creative discovery, committed public service and enlightenment on every humanistic and intellectual level (Yudof, 2010). A good university not only teach their students on syllabus and courses, but teach students how to practice and create new knowledge; as well as encourage innovativeness by developing and nurturing students to become leaders, researchers, pioneers and thinkers.
Learning from these success stories, I can summarized that campus learning in the university must be engaging, stimulating and challenging to the students, which will ultimately offer students an intellectually and holistic rewarding experiences of the university life, exceeding examinations expectations, beyond classroom lectures and more than just memorizing of facts or figure; but understanding of knowledge, application of  theories and practice, as well as critically analyzing new knowledge and information.
In last year’s Transforming Education Summit organized by ADEC that I have attended, it is worth to note that, UAE is giving more attention to emerging knowledge economies such as Finland, Ireland, Canada  and Korea to benchmark their education system. These countries do not have top 50 world-class research university, but they  have excellent technology-focus institutions. (ADEC, 2012). Notwithstanding, a university  should consider the desirability of creating excellent alternative institutions, besides a research university; to meet the wide range of education and training needs that the tertiary education system is expected to satisfy. A university may not need to be good in academic research but they can be a good university that focused on their internal strength, where they have reputation with. For example they must achieve to be top-ranked or best university in Islamic Banking or Entrepreneurship and build their reputation specifically in this area, internationally. MIT for example, is a world-class technology university that integrates theory and practice which are reflected in their internal motto - “’mind and hand”. Harvard the top world-class university in the world did not excel in all disciplines.  
It is worth observing that while world-class institutions are often equated with top research universities, there are also world-class tertiary institutions that are neither research-focus nor operate as universities. The UK Open University for example, is widely recognized as a leading distant learning institution in the world. Conestoga College in Ontario is ranked as the best Community College in Canada. (Salmi, 2009).
As a conclusion, university is not made in a short time. Creating a culture of excellence and high quality output take years to achieve. Freedom of academic expression and strong leadership with clear vision are fundamental to create academic excellence that helps to stimulates internal learning culture and tradition, thus contribute to capacity building in the country.
REFERENCES
ADEC. (2012). Transforming Education Summit. Why Transforming Education . Abu Dhabi: http://www.tes-abudhabi.org.
Fujia, Y. (2003). What Makes a Good University? Fudan University, Ningbao Nottingham University.
Goodaal, A. (2006). The Leader's of the World Top 100 Universities. International Higher Education The Boston Centre for International Higher Education , 3-4.
Salmi, J. (2009). The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities. Washington DC: World Bank.
Yudof, M. (2010, September). University of California. Retrieved February 21, 2013, from Your University of California: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/youruniversity/archive/2010/september/what-makes-a-university-great.html

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

LEADERSHIP FOR GLOBAL MANAGERS



AL KHAWARIZMI UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, ABU DHABI, UAE
ABU DHABI UNIVERSITY, UAE







Monday, August 12, 2013

A DYSFUNCTIONAL ORGANIZATION


What is a dysfunctional organization? There are many definitions and symptoms highlighted by executives and management guru today to recognize signs of dysfunctional company with polarizing leadership. I summarize some below with examples of a local college as a dysfunctional organization:-



Ivory tower effect. Self-important director/manager who is isolated from the core business making their own decision and instruct that his decisions to be implemented by the cadre.  The cadre are the lecturers who are subject matter experts but treated like labour and  that creates a nasty cultural divide between management and lecturers.
Fire fighting. The organization is into a permanent crisis mode. Management is continually unhappy with Performance of lecturers? Students? No! Management is unhappy of lecturers not updating report, files and paperwork – mundane administrative office work. Finding ways to cut lecturers salary!  Do they think about the quality and outcome? No! People’s jobs are constantly in jeopardy. Students cheat? Why bother, they are robots and their jobs are to memorize the slides – cut and paste into the answer booklet. Since no human can memorize all chapters of 5-6 courses, do you blame them to cheat? The self-important director/manager, if you are one of the students, would you be able to memorize all?
Prolonged stress. Do you blame lecturers when everybody is always in high UNNECESSARY stress level? The predicable consequences of unremitting stress are people burn out or break down and people ultimately give up. A fear-driven, unhappy, pressured, can’t-win environment generates employees and lecturers who check their brains at the door. Oh! Management is happy so that they can get cheaper and inferior lecturers to replace. Dysfunction!
Strategy du jour. When dysfunctional executives consistently overreact to a single data point and take the entire organization in a new direction. Often the result of hallway or ad-hoc meetings in obscure places and making decisions in the absence of those who are actually responsible for that sort of thing. And firing the wrong people and not the root cause. In TQM, finding the “root cause” is a critical step in understanding defects and in improving processes.  And that happen every semester. External examiner talked and discussed, but the same thing happen again. Whats the point? Insanity rules?.
Organizational Insanity. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again ...
and expecting a different result.” Do we need to explain more?
Pluralistic Ignorance. It’s amazing in dysfunctional organizations how many people just “don’t get it.”  In other words ‘clueless.” In the college, nearly everyone is clueless, i.e., pluralistic ignorance. Is managing an institutional of higher learning is like managing a small family business? Why do we have doctors with very high level qualification and experience, but junior masters to make decisions, changing all questions developed by subject matter experts, without any clue on how to implement adult learning and what are the processes of intellectual capital development.
Analysis paralysis. When Management  especially from military factions, constantly take actions of issues to death, going down one rat hole or knock-down, drag-out fight after another without actually making the right decisions because there's no clear leadership to drive direction. Too bad my friend, you are the scape goat victimized by the military maréchal de camp!. I heard many more playing backgammon and doing business with students and escaped the 'death sentence'. Insanity~!
No class.  Dysfunctional organizations have a high tolerance for failure, as long as the attitude is right and “lessons have been learned.” Successful organizations realize that the higher you get in an organization, the fewer lessons should be learned. Executives are expected to bring with them certain experiences and skills to perform at a high level. Individuals who don’t possess these capabilities are probably not in the right position. However, the opposite is the culture of dysfunctional organizations. Because you are incompetent, you work hard with no brain (not smart) to prove your loyalty by victimizing the doers and the experts. No class of exemplary is brought into the system.
Segmented morals.  Dysfunctional organizations are infected with a morality of selective absolutes. The stated values and actual behaviors, usually self-serving, are often in direct conflict with each other. This situational ethics approach to organizational values generates a conflicting set of behavioral guidelines that destroy management’s credibility.  You talked, instructed, took actions in segmented issues  and closed eyes in other non-ethical behaviors. Cakap tak serupa bikin!
If these are the symptoms of dysfunctional organizations, then there is one symptom of a functional organization. The latter never tolerates dysfunction. The alternative is “organizational insanity.”
You will go insane if you stay longer!