Private universities ‘know where the money comes from’

Asia’s vanguard of industry-linked private universities is taking the baton from public institutions that “seem to forget where the money is coming from”, a Kuala Lumpur conference has heard.

Sunway University president Sibrandes Poppema said universities spawned by “industrialists” were a feature of an Asian higher education sector that was evolving far more rapidly than its Western progenitors.

Professor Poppema said new tertiary institutions “seldom” emerged in North America or his native Europe. That was not the case in South-east Asia or India.

“Here in Asia, you find so many new universities based on totally different ideas than…the original European and North American universities,” he told the THE Campus Live SE Asia event.

His institution was part of a “green smart city” developed from the mid-1980s in the treeless wasteland of an abandoned tin mine. Its founder, Malaysian entrepreneur Jeffrey Cheah, chairs the Sunway Group property development conglomerate.

Sunway University has just established its own medical school, harnessing the private hospitals of the Sunway Healthcare Group for students’ clinical experience. The institution was Malaysia’s third best performer in this year’s World University Rankings, after climbing around 400 places in just two years.

Another rapid mover in the global league table was the forum’s host, Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP). This year it became the first Malaysian institution to crack the top 250, having ranked in the 601-800 band just four years earlier.

UTP was established in 1997 by the national oil company Petronas, Malaysia’s biggest corporate entity, which is wholly owned by the country’s federal government. The original concept was “to nurture engineering graduates” for the “then nascent energy industry”, according to pro chancellor Tengku Muhammad Taufik, who is also Petronas’ president.

Since then, the university has branched into areas including computing, business, science and sustainability. “We are part of a community that’s driving change,” said vice-chancellor Mohamed Ibrahim.

“We are constantly expanding and growing our network and collaborative efforts. One of the keys for growth is networking with the right partners.”

Chrisminder Dain, general manager of Petronas’ “Future Positioning” technology programme, said the company harnessed UTP – along with universities in the UK and Norway – as a “global technology centre” to “mature the technology” initiated by the company’s innovators.

“An idea starts with industry, and you can go to academia and spur industry collaboration as well,” Mr Dain told the summit. “Petronas is in a unique position having UTP as an outlet.”

Such ideas seem a world away from Western concepts of universities as independent places dedicated to nothing but the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge. Professor Poppema, a former president of the University of Groningen, said he had “very little patience” for such purist notions.

“That’s not what universities are being paid for,” he told the summit. “Universities are being paid…to create a next generation that will be doing better than we did.”

Unlike their private counterparts, public universities “totally seem to forget where the money is coming from”, he said. “We do know where our money is coming from. It’s coming from the students and the parents of the students.”

He said institutions established by “mother companies” were more focused on employability than public universities, where students were encouraged to “follow their dream”, irrespective of labour market outcomes.

Sunway is “a place of hope”, he said, because it shows that the mess…made by tin mining can be restored by human engineering.

“When we are talking about sustainability, we are not talking about keeping things the way they are. That will not be good enough. We should be talking about how to improve things.”

Joseph Cherian, deputy chief executive of the Asia School of Business in Kuala Lumpur, said the mission of universities was “to be of service” to society and the community.

They also had a duty to undertake fundamental research. “But if it’s of no relevance…I think you have to question your mission.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com