Distilling Tajudin

Dr David Lim [DL]: If brevity is wit, how would you describe the person who is the distillation of the flesh-and-blood individual who goes by the name of Mohd Tajudin Md Ninggal, the prominent Professor of Counselling Psychology and licensed professional counsellor who promotes integrative and positive psychology approaches to enhance wellbeing, and the Vice President (Academic & Research) of Open University Malaysia (OUM) whose key responsibility is to navigate the university towards its academic true-north?

Professor Datuk Dr Mohd Tajudin Md Ninggal [TN]: Narratives of who we are invariably betray how we wish to be seen by ourselves and others; they represent the subjective truth of our ideal ego rather than the distillation of an unchanging essence. From this standpoint, I am but a fallible being shaped by forces known and unknown who seeks to do the right thing by his fellow sojourners in life and the One from whom all of us originate.

The Counsel of Time

DL: If time is “the wisest counsellor of all”, as Pericles the Athenian statesman put it, what main counsel would it have offered you?

TN: If time is the wisest counsellor, then, it has counselled me, as it did Rumi, that one ought to seek the path that demands one’s whole being. For me, that path is education.

OUM was founded in 2000 with a very specific mission. That mission, informed by social justice, was unheard of in Malaysia at the time: it was and still is to democratise higher education for all Malaysians.

The Non-Negotiable Constant

DL: At its inception in the late 1990s, OUM was informally self-designated a “teaching university” in an era when it was not only conceivable but also tenable that universities could opt to deprioritize research. Since then the whole academic landscape has evolved radically on the national and global fronts, and it continues to evolve and exert pressure on institutions of higher learning to evolve along or risk being left behind. Private entities in the analytics business have since taken the lead in determining the various performance criteria by which universities are to be measured, rated, and ranked. Governments and their regulating bodies have largely come to subscribe to the analytics-driven paradigm, or have at least found themselves unable to opt out of it. The same applies to other stakeholders, including the boards of governors of the respective universities, employers, and fee-paying learners.

Given the scenario just painted, how do you think universities today, especially open universities operating as private enterprises, can, on the one hand, stay at least one competitive step ahead of the evolving analytics-driven world of measurement that may at any time throw a curveball at them? What if it were to be made a rule tomorrow, for instance, that publications indexed by Clarivate’s Web of Science (WOS) should be more assigned higher scores for valuing purposes as compared to non-WOS-indexed publications – which is already happening in some universities? How do universities, particularly those in the developing world, prepare for such potential changes and, at the same time, remain faithful to the mission that some would say all universities ought to treat as their non-negotiable constant: to serve as truth-seeking institutions?

TN: Although the general understanding of “teaching universities” is that they prioritise teaching over research as their primary mission, that understanding in fact belies the actual variability and complexity of the term. In the US, for instance, the term is often used to describe small liberal arts colleges and community colleges that offer a narrow range of undergraduate education. By design, the wealthier colleges tend to organise exclusive smaller-sized classes and provide a more enriched personalised experience to their learners, while the less endowed ones offer frill-free education. The term has also been used to describe larger comprehensive universities that fall outside the Carnegie R1 (Very High Research Activity) and R2 (High Research Activity) university lists.

Aside from the fact that there are different kinds of “teaching universities”, what is important to note, especially for the layperson, is that, universities of all types that describe themselves or are described as teaching-orientated are not necessarily devoid of research activities. Teaching universities might not have the mass of academic staff to conduct the kind of research that requires costly equipment and multi-million-dollar grants, as is often the case in high-profile research in, say, medicine and the sciences. But not having outsized grants, special equipment, and large teams of academics conducting laboratory-based experiments as part of their research does not mean that research is therefore absent.

At issue here, I believe, is the common misconception, even among some university stakeholders, that research is a fanfare reducible to all the visible signifiers I have just described, entirely overlooking its essence, which is about scholarship and the production of new knowledge that addresses knowledge gaps others have yet to address or that are only now appearing on the horizon as a result of the changing landscape of knowledge. Research as scholarship and the accretive production of new knowledge take place not only in the hard sciences but across disciplines – in Psychology, Islamic Studies, English, History, Philosophy, Management Studies, to name but a few. And they do not always require monumental funding or lab-based experiments done by groups of scientists donning white coats.

The increasing pushback against measurement by external metrics is a reminder that universities are not without agency, and that they could volitionally opt out if their strength of conviction tells them to.

With that clarified, it is now opportune to bring OUM into the discussion. OUM was founded in 2000 with a very specific mission. That mission, informed by social justice, was unheard of in Malaysia at the time: it was and still is to democratise higher education for all Malaysians. How? By removing traditional, if not elitist, access barriers and creating opportunities for under-served Malaysian working adults of all backgrounds to acquire higher education. Not only was OUM’s mission radical and new, so too were the means by which OUM sought to achieve the mission: not by conventional means within the four walls of a classroom, but via distance education by leveraging on advances in technology and andragogy, the theory and practice of adult education.

What OUM pioneered at the turn of the century with the advent of the internet was so novel that it took concerted effort to convince Malaysians that this was indeed a game-changing viable concept. Consistently, over the years, with the government’s support, OUM embarked on roadshows and employed all media to explain to the public how the new mode of teaching and learning worked, and what benefits were waiting to be reaped. At a time when few understood non-traditional methods of doing higher education, OUM, as part of its operations, was already training scores of tutors and subject-matter experts from across Malaysia – thousands of whom were academics from conventional local institutions of higher learning – on the theory and practice of what has come to be known as “open, distance, and digital education” or ODDE. Before anyone else in the country, OUM had set up and cyclically enhanced what has now evolved into a robust online learning platform that serves as the backbone of its services and that others seek to replicate. From the early days, before research was a trending subject, OUM was already engaged in research on ODDE and in the disciplines related to the programmes it offered, quickly becoming a successful model of an ODDE institution that others from around the globe sought to learn from. Through all this, most importantly, OUM stayed on-course to enable Malaysians to realise their dream of acquiring quality higher education on a part-time basis, without having to forgo their jobs or compromise on their life responsibilities. To date, close to one hundred thousand Malaysians, inclusive of almost fifty thousand teachers in Malaysian schools, have been trained and graduated by OUM. This, by any standard, is no mean feat.

In short, in response to your question, if OUM is a “teaching university”, then it is one that has done much more than to “teach” in the traditional sense of the word. In an expansive sense, OUM has helped to educate a nation in an act of nation-building that it was set up to partake in.

Having said that, it is important to acknowledge that the world has changed just as radically since OUM was founded in 2000, both nationally and globally. The plain fact is that OUM can no longer rely on its first mover advantage to stay ahead of the game. Not only is there keen competition from other universities to contend with, there is also the fact that, by the government’s classification, OUM has graduated from the category of emerging university to mature university, thus raising the bar for us to deliver on all fronts. Like all mature universities aged fifteen years and above, OUM is expected to furnish continuous evidence of higher levels of financial sustainability, teaching-staff capability, research capacity, student satisfaction, and other quality criteria set by the government.

Also to be contended with are the metrics used by analytics companies to rank and rate universities – metrics that, as you pointed out, have become increasingly influential with many stakeholders in higher education over the past two decades. For all universities, including OUM, these metrics can be useful as tools to reflect on the multiple ways in which performance may be measured. Even metrics like faculty/student ratio, international student ratio, and international faculty ratio – which are inapplicable to open universities that cater to the masses and are guided by their nation-building mission – are beneficial to consider, for they help us to better appreciate the performance qualities prized by others and to reflect on where we stand in relation to the others.

At the same time, it is crucial to bear in mind that these metrics should not distract us from our institutional mission. Even the law schools of Yale, Harvard, and the University of California have recently withdrawn from a popular US ranking exercise due to the methodologies used that are deemed to be misaligned with their institutional values and the core commitments of the profession. Other shortcomings of the various ranking exercises that have been rightly highlighted by detractors include the observation that they are invariably tilted in favour of research-intensive universities based in the developed nations and that they unfairly apply the same standards to all universities irrespective of their founding mission.

The increasing pushback against measurement by external metrics is a reminder that universities are not without agency, and that they could volitionally opt out if their strength of conviction tells them to. This is not to whitewash the fact that the world is structured by asymmetrical power relations, that universities in the developing world may be constrained in ways that elite universities in the Global North are not. It is rather in recognition of the asymmetry of things that universities in the developing world have all the more reason to find their mettle. What are their values and commitments? What do they seek to achieve? And what will they not compromise on? It is essential that they clarify their values and firmly orientate towards their institutional true-north. Better still if they were able to operate with an eye to the future, remain nimble in adapting to change, and adroitly balance teaching and research within the “Goldilocks Zone” that they would need to set for themselves within the bounds of their resources and the expectations of the governing bodies to which they are answerable.

Academics in open universities such as OUM are unique for their 360-degree expertise in delivering higher education in ODDE mode.

The Evolution and Reinvention of Universities

DL: In the early days, open universities were a category of universities unto themselves – one that was supposed to be different from that in which conventional brick-and-mortar universities are placed. That distinction appears to be fast dissolving in the post-Covid era. Open and conventional universities are increasingly converging in key areas: in the use of digital technologies to facilitate teaching and learning; in the teaching-learning mode that may gradate from blended to fully online; in the migration of in-person exams to online exams; in the recruitment targeting of the same pool of learners; and so on. External circumstances have been the impetus behind this ongoing convergence which has given rise to an existential crisis of sorts for open universities in general. This was in fact already anticipated by Alan Tait who in his essay titled “Open Universities: The Next Phase” cautioned that “there is no guaranteed place for Open Universities in the landscape of higher education: it will have to be earned once again” and again, as the global landscape of higher education continues to evolve.

What are your views on this unfolding? What options are available for open universities to exercise and reinvent itself?

TN: The scenario you have just sketched is real. The key enabler here is technology and we already know that the change that technology brings happens gradually, then suddenly. So, it behoves us all – in higher education as in all other sectors where technology is a driving force – to continually engage in environment scanning, to be attuned to the kinds of technological innovations that are taking place. The idea I’m advocating here is not to jump onto the bandwagon of every emerging technology as the fashionable course of action to take. What I have in mind, rather, is the cultivation and pursuit of an intellectual curiosity in emerging technologies, especially those that have been earmarked as potentially disruptive.

Ark Invest at https://ark-invest.com/bigideas- 2023/, for instance, has identified five innovation platforms to watch: artificial intelligence, public blockchains, energy storage, robotics, and multiomic sequencing (which relates to the gathering and sequencing of digital biological data). Some of the technologies emerging from these converging platforms include smart contracts, next gen cloud, cryptocurrencies, and adaptive robotics. Even if we are not entirely sure about the details of these advances and the precise ways in which they will shape the future, we can be sure that some of these will gradually, then suddenly, impact our lives, including the way we conceive and deliver higher education. The challenge for all universities, conventional and open, is to translate technology as it ripens into practical, sensible, reliable, cost-effective, user-friendly solutions to make teaching and learning meaningful, all within the scope of the institutional mission. This is actually much more arduous than it might appear, for what is required is not only a firm understanding of the technological potentiality but also, arguably more importantly, a grounded understanding of the philosophy and practice of education, all of which is built, essentially, on our conception of what it means to be human, hence the vital importance of the human and social sciences as disciplines. And this is where some open universities may have an advantage over the conventional universities where adult learners are concerned.

While universities of all types might be converging in the key areas you mentioned earlier, universities that specialise in serving working adult learners may have an edge by virtue of the fact that they would be able to draw on two key resources: first, the wealth of practical experience they have accumulated over the years in working with adult learners; and, second, evidence-based insights from research on adult education in which they have invested so as to better serve adult learners. In the end, though, collaborating, rather than competing, with other parties from our position of strength will, I think, best prepare us for the brave new world that we are on the cusp of entering.

Dis/Parity of Esteem

DL: In Issue 18 of inspired, Prof Junhong Xiao observed the long-standing but under-interrogated craving of open universities for “parity of esteem” from conventional universities, warning that the former should not be “overoptimistic” about obtaining it from the latter. He argued that parity of esteem was not entirely forthcoming from the latter – not because there is a question mark over the distance learning mode in which programmes are run, but rather because, fairly or not, there is a question mark over the quality of the “distance learning programmes run by distance education institutions.” This, also, indirectly places a question mark over the quality of the academics behind the programmes. To compound the problem, some open universities appear to also crave parity of esteem for their academic staff who are, again, fairly or not, being measured with the yardstick originating from conventional universities which often prioritise research over other academic-related activities including teaching.

This double craving that births an existential crisis, it seems to me, is entirely the making of the open universities experiencing said crisis, bearing in mind that not all open universities necessarily face the same. It is their making because they failed to mount a spirited defence of the merits of their programmes against what Prof Xiao calls the “absurd, snobbish and hypocritical” attitudes of those who would question the quality of the programmes on account of them being offered by open universities. It is their making, also, because they did not adequately nurture a research culture in their own institutions from the outset. And it is their making because they failed to recognise, value, and reward their own academic staff for what their counterparts in conventional universities lack: the cumulative practical experience and expertise of their own academics in delivering and managing open, distance, and digital higher education, preferring or compelled instead to esteem the research achievements of the well-resourced conventional universities that are threatening to supplant open universities given the ongoing digital convergence of things.

What are your views on this ironic disparity of esteem that is weighted against open universities? How does one break the deadlock?

one of the university’s proudest achievements is its alumni community, which is almost one hundred thousand strong

TN: Like it or not, elitism is deeply ingrained in the norms and values of many societies. It reinforces the status and self-worth of those who subjectively locate themselves on the higher levels of the social hierarchy, and it serves as a buffer against the fear of change in an increasingly uncertain world. OUM was founded precisely to dismantle the kind of elitism that prevents ordinary Malaysians from acquiring and reaping the benefits of higher education, bearing in mind that higher education is many things to many people: an opportunity to prove to oneself that one is no less capable than the next person, an investment in the promise of upward social mobility, a structured way of scratching an intellectual itch, a means of reinventing oneself or carving a second career, a way of honouring one’s parents – the reasons are as many as there are learners interested in earning a degree.

Eased accessibility to higher education made possible by open universities’ admission policy and mode of delivery has attracted its fair share of cynics and sceptics, including those who still believe that higher education ought to be reserved for a minority deemed to possess superior abilities and talents. Be that as it may, open universities have proven the cynics and sceptics wrong, especially now, post-Covid, that ODDE has become as mainstream as classroom-bound education. Open universities have been vindicated, as have their graduates who have made their mark in the world, irrespective of whether they are esteemed by a minority of elitists, including those from the conventional universities. If there are academics in open universities that still hanker for parity of esteem from their peers in the conventional universities or elsewhere, then there may be cause for them to soul-search to ascertain if the root causes of their desire are not their own lack of self-regard, under-appreciation of the distinctiveness of their institutional mission, and incomplete grasp of what it means to teach and learn.

Lastly, I agree that we should not lose sight of the fact that the kind of work performed by academics in open universities such as OUM is highly specialised and cannot be compared to the teaching-research-administrative work of their peers in the conventional universities. Academics in open universities such as OUM are unique for their 360-degree expertise in delivering higher education in ODDE mode. Trained to practise on a solid theoretical foundation of ODDE, they are actively involved in all aspects of ODDE delivery from curriculum conception, material production, and instructional design, through teaching, assessment, management, research, and marketing, to providing pastoral care to learners facing unique challenges when studying in the ODDE mode. They are ODDE natives and it was this very fact that enabled OUM to coast through the Covid era while many other institutions struggled to deliver their programmes online without necessarily understanding the whys and wherefores of ODDE. For any person and institution to undervalue this very specialised skillset of ODDE academics and to compound that by expecting them to be more like their peers in the conventional universities, instead of expecting their peers to be more like them, would be to do them a great disservice.

From Silver to Gold

DL: OUM will be celebrating the silver jubilee of its founding in a little over two years from now. Looking back at the close to twenty-five-year history of the institution founded with the mission to democratise higher education, what would you say are its proudest achievements? How has OUM evolved over the years, and what might it look like by the time it celebrates its golden jubilee?

TN: A quarter of a century would yield more than a few memorable moments. OUM is in the midst of documenting the key moments of its journey for public exhibition in time for its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2025. I would venture to say now, though, that one of the university’s proudest achievements is its alumni community, which is almost one hundred thousand strong and serves as a testament to the institution’s commitment to providing a quality education and fostering lifelong connections with its graduates.

On the future of universities and higher education, it is fascinating to note that many of the predictions are already present today in at least nascent forms: customisable, on-demand education; offerings of degree and shorter-cycle courses; flexible learning; blended learning; learner-focused approach to learning; free access to a global selection of learning resources; and the like. Technology, predictably, will be essential in creating deeply immersive learning environments. Taking these into account, I hope that, twenty-five years after its twenty-fifth anniversary, OUM will have innovated and evolved its mission in alignment with future circumstances but that it will remain always an integral part of the community it serves.