Priority misplacement in our local university

USM is entering its second phase as an APEX university. We was told from the first APEX phase to  submit any proposal that could elevate the university status in terms of research output. However bulky bureaucratic procedures and the lack of information channel have not contributed in making the proposal submission by any poorly-contacted academic staff a task worth trying. At the back of this reluctance is the prototypical opinion that any suggestion will either fall into deaf ears or results in lip service responses. I think I have tried to make a few informal attempts there and then some proposals to improve the academic quality in the university, but I do not register any memory that these attempts ever bear results that make a marked difference. Overall, there has been little change in the way how business is done despite the phrase 'business unusual' was the slogan of the day since the university acquired the APEX status many years ago. 

As a researcher in the school's academic team I am free to carry out my own research very freely without interruption from the university. This is taken by me as a deep blessing. The university does provide much freedom to their academics to conduct their own research. But on the other hand the university has never been actively improving the academic environment to makes the university a more conducive place for quality research. The primary root cause of the lack of conducive academic environment is structural: that bureaucrats dominate over academicians (not only in our university but in fact in all our local universities). Whenever anyone has a proposal to implement something new (e.g. a new course, a new way to handling things, a new facility, a new system ...), the first consideration by the people in charge is not to think of how to actualise such proposal. Instead their first thought will be: is this allowed by the existing rules? Such an inappropriate priority has a deep negative impact in creating a top class university and an innovative ambiance. 

There is nothing wrong about obeying rules. The main issues is people are deeply mired in the lethargic thinking that we must not change the rule but to follow them. People never ask themselves this question: are not the rules created to make things work better? If these rules become counterproductive, should not they be reconsidered, modified or just discarded? No. People don't ask such question. They just follow the status quo, which is the most comforting thing to do, and also the safest. 

Most often rules in the university are used as the most convenient pretext to turn down a innovative proposal. For example, can we hire a half-paid researcher and allow him/her to work as an paid researcher in another university? Not so, I suppose, even if he is the first Malaysia having the potential to win a Nobel prize. How about setting up a new course that is deemed most popular in the market? No, you can't simply do that. It takes at least half a year to go through all the necessary procedures before a new course is approved and launched. Can't we just lunch a new course in two weeks time as long as an expert has made all necessary preparation to teach the course? In principle yes, but never in reality. In some overseas universities, as long as an expert in the field wills, he can at anytime offer a new course teaching the most up-to-date findings in his field. So in this specific case, demanding a new course to fulfill all the bureaucratic procedures of getting approval is actually counterproductive. But yet people keep on insisting that fulfilling the rules is more important that delivering new knowledge. If the people in charge is proactive enough it is possible to   place academic priority over bureaucratic consideration. I have not seen such thing happen yet. 

Giving priority to the rules rather than real productivity has blocked the way for excellence in our local university. Somewhat pessimistically I do not expect in our life time that such bureaucratic-dominated mentality will see any sea change.