Search committee vital for VC appointments

The job of a chief executive officer of a university whether it is called vice-chancellor (VC) or president is full of responsibility, accountability, and challenge. Just like in a corporation, where a CEO determines the success of a corporation and sets the path for its survival and growth, the same can be said of a university.

In a corporation, a CEO is appointed by its board of directors – which is made up of many individuals who are well-versed in the business and have proven themselves to be successful in their endeavours.

Thus, the appointment of a VC needs to be made by a search committee – a committee that is made up of representatives from various parties including the members of the board of trustees, faculty members (professors), alumni, a student representatives, etc.

This will ensure that the search committee will have diverse perspectives when evaluating candidates. It will also ensure that the selected candidate will be respected by faculty members.

It is the responsibility of the committee to come up with a document which outlines the desired qualities and characteristics of a VC.

This document will have to be made public in an effort to gain feedback from the public. This can be done by posting the criteria over the Internet. The search committee must also seek to balance this openness and transparency with an appropriate level of confidentiality for all the participants of the search process, including that of the eventual candidates.

The final decision by the higher education minister to appoint a VC must thus be based on the recommendation of the search committee. Failing to do this means political meddling on the part of politicians which can have a detrimental impact on the running of the university.

It is desirable but not essential that a VC candidate should have academic experience. However, just because s/he was an academic once – especially if s/he was just a lecturer – does not necessarily qualify him/her to lead a university.

A VC or a president needs to lead by example. Thus, if the candidate happens to be an academic, at the very least s/he must have a PhD and be a full professor, which means that s/he has demonstrated competency in teaching, research, and community services.

The teaching part is normally achieved through years of teaching experience, the research part is through publication of research work in quality refereed international journals in his/her field of expertise while the community service is through involvement and participation in administrative work, committee works, student advising, etc.

In other words, if the candidate for a VC happens to be an academic, in order to lead a university, s/he needs to be a full professor first before anything else. Otherwise, how is s/he going to gain the respect from his/her fellow academics?
Of course, when one is up at the top, one can easily promote oneself to a full professor, since one is now in the position of power. This has already happened in certain universities in the country. But, when s/he does that, s/he will become a laughing stock of not only to his/her faculty members but also to any academic who knows of his/her background.

Now, in the past several years, we have seen the drastic decline in the rankings (such as that of the Thes) of our premier universities to the point that none have appeared in the list of world’s top 200 universities.
So, if the government is really serious in wanting to arrest this decline, the first step they should do is to put in place a really capable leader to head all those universities.

In trying to do that, any new appointment or replacement of a VC must be done by a well- represented and qualified search committee as outlined above.

Malaysiakini
Search committee vital for VC appointments Mohamed Zain | Nov 24, 08 2:57pm