IBELIEVE universities in Malaysia and in Southeast Asia have an incredibly important, albeit daunting, mission, creating not just leaders but also responsible citizens.
Yet, I am wondering if this paramount role is fully understood and internalised by higher educations' administrators, faculty and students themselves.
A new book offers some interesting insights for reflection and could help regenerate a new interest in the civic role of universities.
The Real World of College, the result of a research lasting eight years, focused on non-vocational higher education in the United States.
With a survey involving 2,000 individuals, including 500 incoming students, 500 graduating students, and representatives of faculties, administrators of different universities, the authors, Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner, both from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, offer an holistic picture of the state of universities in the US.
The authors are key members of the Good Work Project that since 1996 has been researching the importance of encouraging ethical, excellent, and engaging work, an initiative in which a key member was the late Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, theorist of the concept of "flow".
Their desire is to understand how universities can do a better job in shaping good and responsible citizens in all their students.
Bottom line, instead of focusing on launching new proposals, what the authors call "projectitis" or the seemingly endless effort to proliferate initiatives, higher education centres should be more centred on their overarching mission.
The risk is that many new activities for students might have a negative effect on those who feel pressurised to build the "perfect resume" as "students often feel as if they need to participate in all of them".
This can create stress, exhaustion and a sense of confusion. Moreover, many initiatives promoted by universities tend to be disconnected from the central purpose they should embrace.
In substance, instead of focusing on the "what" and "how", it is vital for higher education institutions to focus on the "why". Their definition of liberal arts education clarifies what universities should truly aspire for.
"The goal of each interdisciplinary learning community is that every student should develop an identity as a student on campus and as a contributing member of the local community."
Refocusing on the mission of the universities is key, but the problem is also cultural and societal. The students are under constant pressure to perform and that's what perhaps explains one of the findings of the books: the egocentrism of students — the focus on "me" rather than "us".
Building a resume should not be a goal itself. Students should have more freedom to freely choose which activities to undertake.
There is, instead, as the authors say, a "uber transactionality" where students feels it's more important to get an A or to build their resume to get a particular job than it is to be exposed to new, different, or challenging content material.
Interestingly, Fischman and Gardner also came up with "four mental models" through which students embrace their studying, inertial, transactional, exploratory and transformational, with the latter two focused on discovery and genuine progress.
Universities, according to them, must focus on the concept of onboarding, or as explained by what the authors gave for The MIT Press Reader, "how to get all students aligned with the goal of the university, higher learning".
Though based on American universities, the book offers reflections for all universities, including in Malaysia and the region.
Probably, there is a need to reevaluate their true vision and reason for being a provider of higher education.
I do understand the need of attracting new students as the main reason for this almost maniac focus on advertising their international rankings — often the first thing you know about universities in Malaysia when looking at their websites.
Too much focus on ranking is misplaced. Better step back and re-think the real goals of universities.
In doing so, it is worthy exploring what Fischman and Gardner define as the "Higher Education Capital" to describe a student's ability to attend, analyse, reflect, connect and communicate on issues of importance.
Rethinking about a university's place in the society is fundamental to ensure all students embrace a transformational approach to learning, but they need a great environment for that.
Offering a true sense of belonging is one way to enable students to, holistically, and truly, shine, helping Malaysia and the region to a better future.
The author writes on civic engagement, youth development, the SDGs, human rights and regional integration in the context of Asia Pacific