AKEPT TALK DOVE SERIES

Organisers: International Islamic University Malaysia and Higher Education Leadership Academy, Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia

Education nowadays has been shaped and geared towards responding to the demand from the industry and inevitably transformed them into economy-driven institutions. The focus to produce employable graduates has been put so much weightage that it changes the whole dynamics of teaching and learning. The indicator of a successful student seems to be only measured by employability without considering other aspects that make up a human. Hence, education has been drifted further and further from the philosophy of education which should strongly emphasize the balance between intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and physical of a person. At the same time, while neoliberalism does have a positive impact on the advancement of the economy, education seems to be affected negatively by it.

Neoliberalism has introduced an economistic mechanism, mainstreaming the application of market-based value, deregulation, and commodification in the pretext of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of education delivery. This, in turn, had transformed the education system into a tool for economic mechanisms. This phenomenon has raised concerns among many academia since the education system now is all about ranking games, racing towards completing writing and publication just to be published in a highly reputable journal but with questionable real impact on society.

Therefore, there is an urgent need for a paradigm change in university leadership towards humanizing the education system back to be grounded on a strong value system, as to how universities are supposed to be. In Malaysia, the higher education development blueprint has placed a very clear and significant emphasis on the value system. Unfortunately, along the implementation process, such value system is diluted by various pressure and requirements that the main stakeholders, the graduates, do not seem to inherit the value system intended to be inculcated in them. Therefore, there is a dire need to relook and refine the way the values are imparted and nurtured into the students throughout the process so that it will provide a new narrative with clear parameters and measures.

In pushing for this agenda, the National Education Philosophy, enacted in 1988, can serve as the main reference to restore the spirit and principles at every level of education in Malaysia, from primary education to lifelong education programs. History shows that the evolution of universities has always been a continuous competition between building character with the right value system and equipping students with competencies and skills needed by the industries. The world has seen many universities striving to balance between the two responsibilities. Within the same context, one of the major challenges is to find the right approach in integrating science, technology, and humanities inputs into the curriculum structure and the whole education process. One of the manifestations of this struggle is how universities respond to the global call to act more responsively to the sustainable development agenda.