KACAMATA KU: Embracing Myriad Challenges From University To Multiversity And Now Communiversity
In 2018, in an op-ed piece, I wrote about the concept of a “multi-university” or multiversity for short. This was to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the establishment of a well-known organisation, the Consumers Association of Penang (CAP).
The chance meeting shaped my thinking as to what education is all about! USM, then led by its founder Vice-Chancellor – the late Prof Tan Sri Hamzah Sendut – whose vision far surpassed that of his time.
Being the second university in the country, USM was adventurous with many firsts.
As a rule of thumb, science students must opt 30 per cent of their courses from the non-science schools, and vice versa. To make things more exciting, USM was the first to offer courses in the Social Sciences, as well as Humanities disciplines placed under two new “schools.” They are the first in Malaysia.
It was while adventuring into this, that as a science student, I discovered CAP and the many other colourful personalities who became my mentors and role-models away from the sterile academic world.
Especially against exploitation and corruptions rampantly practised by a group of opportunists ready to pounce on marginalised and vulnerable among the less educated in community.
CAP as the “voice of little people” – stood tall as the dominant protector of human dignity and human rights. It is fiercely professional and effective in ensuring that justice is met.
USM, meanwhile, is struggling to shake off the elitist image that is often piggybacked on the various scientific disciplines offered by the university.
The multidisciplinary approaches help to create a platform whereby people of all disciplines could come together forming a “co- laboratory” – a real-world learning lab.
It was evolving until the unprecedented pandemic experiences came unexpectedly.
Fast forward, the multiversity morphed further into a more robust concept of collaborating and co-creating together with the community hence, a “communiversity!”
The novel concept is far superior in that it enhances the multiversity within the context of sustainability or sustainable development that was largely absent until then.
Meaning, what drives universities then was the conception of Sustainability and Sustainable Development.
Yet as the pandemic clearly demonstrated without ESD it is insufficient to ensure the survival of humanity and the planet.
Namely, without community empowerment and engagement closely fused with a university, it cannot transform the society beyond just reimagining it.
CAP in this sense has proven how it works, with IIUM more recently following suit when it embarked on the realisation of the Communiversity beginning 2020 in the midst of the pandemic.
Over the years, the Communiversity model gains momentum in transforming the community, involving thousands of students participating in more than 400 projects covering hundreds of locations nationwide.
The relevant policy-making and -implementing agencies are therefore well-advised to keep abreast with time, in particular, while addressing the post-pandemic tragedy as an existential threat to humanity on a planetary scale.
It is time for multiversity to move over in making space for communiversity.
Failing of which the educational ecosystem remains a barrier to the challenges of the future as it is today!
– by Prof Emeritus Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Rector, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM)
Source: Bacalah Malaysia (July 2024)