Top lecturers for public universities? Too many public universities?

Refering to The Star article "Only the best for 20 varsities" , i can only read with a major skeptism in my mind. Accordding to the Minister of Higher Education, "the hiring of academicians for the 20 public universities will be based on meritocracy to ensure high standards". Three simple questions came to my mind:

1) where are they going to find all these "talented" academicians?
Fresh Phd Graduates from local universities or dodgy oversea universities? Or in fact, a bunch of Bachelor graduates or perhaps some with Master degrees. What do they term as talent? Talent for research and academic excellence? or Talent for teaching? To be honest, we just don't have the number. How the ministry intend to attract these talents to Malaysia (or to Kelantan, kedah, Pahang for that matter!)

2) are these universities going to be center of academic & research excellence, or merely degree-mills ?
Malaysia's degree mills actually have buildings and classes, just that the content is water-downed and the quality is greatly reduced. As long as the basic is there, it's good enough isn't it? One Prof as a Rector/Chancellor, one or two full Phd Holders as heads of departments, and fill up the faculties with poor quality masters/phd holders.

3) how much money we want to waste on these universities before we realize that money and building alone don't make up a school?


A few years ago, we don't have that many universities, but we have several "world-class ones". At least USM and UTM then have one of the few good engineering schools in SE Asia. UM and UKM was still premier universities of studies related to Asia, SE Asia and Asean. UPM was relatively strong in its partnership with Mardi and FRIM on agricultural research. UIA was truly world class with its niche subject areas as well as English-focused education. UPSI (recent upgrade) was a world class teachers college then, which was also the hotbed for nationalism back in the days. UUM, UiTM, UTAR and other private universites (MMU, UTP,UNITEN) are your recent universities that taken the role of churning out mass amount of graduates (albeit some truly talented gradutes).

Then some brilliant politicians think it's good to have a university at every state and hence we have (be prepared ...):

Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) - Kedah (quite old)
UiTMs - Selangor, Perak, Johor, Perlis, everywhere really!
Universiti Darul Iman Malaysia (UDM) - Terrenganu(GE,05 promise)
Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK) - Kelantan (GE,06 promise)
Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) - Pahang
Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP) - Perlis
Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) - Sabah
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) - Sarawak
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) - Terrenganu II (this is more recent)
Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (UPNM) - ala west point?
Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia(USIM) - Negeri Sembilan
Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) - Melaka
Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia(UTHM) - Johor (good bye Kuittho)

Phew! I ll keep this list for my own reference! :D Hopefully some of these will be more than just a degree mill. God bless Malaysia.

Source: Kementerian Pengajian Tinggi