Azmi Sharom’s article on the local obsession with university rankings and KPIs resonates with me. Very much. And indeed the insistence on publishing in journals have a much more heavy blow on the humanities disciplines.
Some notable excerpts from the article:
A university is a complex organisation. It is unlike a factory where there is by and large one goal and usually one method with which to achieve the said goal with the best quality and efficiency.
(Unfortunately, that *is* what many people, especially locally, have come to regard universities as: factories for churning out obedient workforce.)
You can’t possibly be laying down a single criterion for quality for such a diverse group. But that is what happened.
Increasingly, the thinking of universities is it is our way or the highway. Such a top down approach cannot work because each academic unit in a university has its own expertise and its own value system.
I am not against the publishing of works in reputable journals. I acknowledge that they are important to the advancement of academic thought.
What I am saying is that the diversity of academia means that there are numerous methods to determine quality. And the best way to achieve quality is by having true academic autonomy so that those who know best are the ones who determine the way to achieve the best.
