Universities in the country have just had a royal education, one they may have missed all these years. Speaking at the 64th Convocation of Universiti Malaya on Nov 30, Sultan of Perak Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah reminded universities of their forgotten purpose: to produce model human beings of character. Forgotten because they have focused merely on churning out keen minds, with little to no attention to nurturing the heart, the organ that is the home of noble character and seat of the soul.
Sultan Nazrin put it thus: "The university's mission cannot be limited to producing a large number of graduates. It must also focus on shaping character and nurturing the holistic humanity of its graduates."
If the universities needed a meaningful measure of success, His Highness provided one. It is when the university is able "to instil noble values within each graduate, ensuring they possess inner strength and uphold ethics, morality, accountability and integrity when entrusted with responsibilities".
By this measure of success, how have our universities done? Not well at all in our assessment. Malaysia's moral malaise, both in the private and public sectors, is a call to action to those tasked with educating our students.
Here is the royal list of great concern: prevalence of corruption, mismanagement, abuse of power and breaches of trust. Such actions, Sultan Nazrin said, are akin to cancerous cells eroding the nation's anatomy. Alumni given to such moral depravity not only shame the universities that graduate them, but also the country. Sultan Nazrin's call must be treated as a royal wake-up call to our universities, especially to those which have given education of the heart a miss.
The consequences of such missed education are dire. Companies can collapse and countries can go deep into debt. Enron Corporation, the Texas-based energy company that went into oblivion because of accounting fraud, is a good example of what kind of graduates a university shouldn't produce.
Entrusted with shareholders' money and employees' pensions, the chairman, chief executive officer and chief financial officer looted both of their money in the biggest financial scandal of the time. All three were found guilty. When Enron went into bankruptcy in 2001, its shareholders lost US$790 billion and its employees their jobs and pensions. Dire is the right diction.
Countries, too, can be left to face dire consequences. Malaysia's debt stands at RM1.5 trillion, how much is due to corruption, wastage and leakages we can't tell. But this much we know.
The country lost RM277 billion — almost equivalent to the gross domestic product of Johor and Penang combined — between 2018 and 2023, according to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission. Using this as a basis, a very conservative estimate is a loss of RM55 billion a year.
Just imagine the schools, universities, hospitals, roads, bridges and more the government could have built. Or the poor who could have been taken out of poverty. Or the scholarships that could have put students through universities that shape character and holistic humanity of graduates that Sultan Nazrin spoke of.
Malaysia is badly in need of such graduates, or to borrow a phrase from Islamic scholar Royal Professor Tan Sri Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, "praiseworthy personalities". Our universities must get back to the heart of education.