Crisis in Academia- (In search of an overall academic Philosophy – Part 3)
(This is a continuation of my discourse on academia. You might want to read part 1 and part 2)
There is a general despair in academia.
Examining news headlines, popular blogs, viral Facebook postings,
excluding those coming from academia glorifying itself, of late we get a
generally bleak perceptions of Malaysian Academia. While local universities are
wax lyrical about their amazing jumps in global ranking game, we keep hearing
public complaints. Among the complaints we keep hearing are, universities are
out of touch with industry and society[i], low job competency of
graduates[ii], low employment rate of
graduates[iii], slow conversion of
innovations into commercialisation[iv], stressful working
environment for academic staff[v], low impact of knowledge
outside academia, etc. I recalled recently the top management of a public
university was summoned by a minister to explain a damaging online article that
alleged the university is no longer relevant to the field it has always
championed.
In this article, I would argue that the
root of these problems lies in the dominance of the worldview I described in my
previous article as Reductionist/Cartesian mode of scientific thinking. Just to
recap, the reductionist approach to understanding a problem, or identifying a
necessary solution, is by isolating and focusing on only those factors that
have measurable or quantifiable impacts. Another key characteristic of this
philosophy is that real world phenomenon are dealt with by dividing a problem
into smaller parts and dealt separately, and then reconstituted to fix it.
While this sounds logical, the problem with managing
university's performance, or managing human in general is a lot of factors
are non-measurable, hence the solutions proposed seldom considers the full
dynamic of a phenomenon. Another problem is that real phenomena are often more
than the sum of its parts. A human being is not simply a collection of
biological cells and chemical reactions. Despite these inadequacies, the
reductionists worldview continues to be the dominant paradigm ruling not only
academia, but almost every other aspects of humanity.
Outside academia, we understand these
shortcomings and seldom rely solely on reductionist mode of thinking in
decision making. Take the example of evaluating a fresh graduate competency for
a job. Prospective employers understood well that it is really absurd to employ
somebody just by looking at his or her CGPA number. There are a lot of other
factors that will determine his competency and potential performance. As such
there is a need to conduct face to face interview. During the interview
potential employer would assess a lot of other factors left out by CGPA,
such as the graduate's involvement in social activities, teamwork capability,
awareness of latest events and trends, extracurricular activities, attitudes,
even right down to their mannerism. Some organisations even have special tests
to further assess competencies of applicants. Sometimes it is up to individual
interviewer to ask quirky questions to satisfy his or her curiosity. Why are
all these necessary? Shouldn’t CGPA be enough? It is not enough because as a
purely reductionist way of understanding a phenomenon, it does not capture the
whole picture. These subjective, meta CGPA evaluations are necessary to get
better and comprehensive picture of a candidate's potential. I would term these
meta cgpa evaluations as 'the whole picture re-assembly'.
The job market is wise enough to have
these non-metrics assessment mechanisms in place as a corrective measure to
make informed decisions in hiring. The tragedy that befalls academia is that it
doesn’t have such wisdom when it comes to assess academic performance.
Universities are evaluated based on reductionist paradigm while there is no
whole picture reassembly mechanism to provide a comprehensive performance
evaluation of its impact. Administrators are given specific sets of checklists
and metrics to evaluate faculty performance, staff performance, funding review,
teaching and research quality etc. As a result, the evaluation of actual
performance and impact of academia can be distorted, skewed or totally
misleading. These lead to bigger disaster when the skewed evaluations are used
to make key decisions such as budget allocation, promotion and tenure,
dismissal, incentives and punishment. (Oh yes there are punitive measures in
Malaysian academia). Although there are attempts to conduct beyond metrics
assessments in some evaluation process, they are just 'formalities'. For
example, for promotion, or funding requests, there are interviews and
presentations. However, they are being filtered strictly by metrics before they
are allowed face to face interactions. I have been through many of such
interactions. Certain numbers must be met, certain criteria should be tick
boxed. Even during face to face interactions, assessors spent more time looking
at printed information, numbers and tick boxes than engaging
with applicants.
Why academia is so fixated with the
Cartesian/reductionist way of thinking? There is a logical explanation to this.
It is the basis of modern science. It is a powerful epistemological method
dealing with natural phenomenon. When observing planetary motions, chemical
reactions, biological and physical phenomenon, there is a fixed pattern that
can be reduced to mathematical explanation. This approach is so powerful that
it gives rise to the popular reductionist's adage;
“Life can be explained by biology,
biology can be explained by chemistry, chemistry can be explained by Physics,
Physics can be explained by mathematics. Therefore, life can be explained by
mathematics”
As the seat of scientific thinking,
academia pride itself as the upholder of this paradigm. Why shouldn’t it? It is
powerful, it transforms civilisations. Academia identify itself as the sanctum
of scientific mind, anything less would erode their prestige.
Well the tragedy happens because this
paradigm simply is not suited to deal with human and humanity. While it can
explain living organisms in terms of biological and physiological dynamics, it
does not explain human behaviour and all its quirkiness. The reductionist
method does not take into consideration motives, aspirations, sentiments,
fears, anxieties, passions, despairs; which are the basic elements that make up
humanity.
While elsewhere, post-modernist,
post-positivism, holistic approach, heuristic, systemic thinking are being
embraced as complementary ways of looking at humanity, Malaysian academia seems
to be stuck with last century's mode of thinking, explaining the crisis it
endures today.
By
Zaky Jaafar
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