From an Ivory Tower to a Trading Tower and now a Human Tower! These are the three major waves that can be ascribed to the evolution of universities in recent times

Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abd Razak The writer is the Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia.

This article was published in The New Sunday Times on 10th October 2010 -------------------------------------------------- From being institutions which are isolated and engrossed in academic work for its own sake, universities were suddenly thrust into another role -- to cooperate with industry as a means of transferring their knowledge for commercial use. This task is so dominant that many fear that universities have somewhat been transformed into trading posts where knowledge becomes commodities to be traded. With the advent of patents and intellectual property rights, education turned into "big" business with industry as a partner. Now universities create their own commercial arms to convert knowledge into material wealth as investment. Generating income becomes a preoccupation of modern universities, especially when governments are no longer able to support their development financially. The image of a Trading Tower is becoming so prominent that there are entities called Corporate University being set up to lend support to such activities. This has led to the notion of for-profit education in the name of democratisation in the world of free enterprise! Former Harvard University president Derek Bok passionately argues in his book Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialisation of Higher Education that tertiary institutions are risking their core mission in pursuit of money even when they have to compromise on fundamental academic values. Although it is gaining acceptance -- at the expense of losing public trust and respect -- this is a dilemma for many.