(Re)Positioning Humanities in the Malaysian Higher Education Landscape
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper discusses the humanities and humanities education, which is inevitably embedded in the context of a re-assessment of the role and functions of universities in the current and future Industry 4.0 environment. While the humanities are generally considered as an embattled field since the emphasis on science and technology subjects in many developed and emerging economies, this paper does not subscribe to the notion of the humanities being handcuffed to a crisis narrative that are incomplete and disabling its future potentials. In the Industry 4.0 environment and perhaps an equivalent Society 4.0, there would be a dire need for society to envision a plan that would give top priority to the potential benefits of a higher education based on human-technology convergence. Failure to do so would mean humans would be overwhelmed by robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), peripheralising any disciplines that are considered as not relevant. In the context of Malaysia, the paper unpicks the issues and challenges in the provision of humanities education in the higher education landscape that begin to acknowledge and reclaim values and the human outcome in the higher education system still in the nascent stage of realising the importance of framing policies in the context of the human-technology convergence. This paper concludes by suggesting the way forward in re-positioning the humanities and humanities education, which would contribute to the idea of humanising higher education in the context of Industry 4.0.
Article Details
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Altbach, P.G., Reisberg, L., Salmi, J. and Froumin, I. (eds.). 2018. Accelerated universities. Boston: Brill Sense.
Azian, T.S.A. 2015. STEM education: Policies and prospects toward achieving international standards and meeting national development needs. Paper presented at the International Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics: High Level Policy Forum on Evidence Based Science Education in Developing Countries, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 26–27 May.
Becher, T. and Trowler, P.R. 2001. Academic tribes and territories (2nd ed.). Buckingham: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.
Bok, D. 2003. Universities in the marketplace: The commercialization of higher education. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Brown, W. 2011. Neoliberalized knowledge. History of the Present 1(1): 113–129. https://doi.org/10.5406/historypresent.1.1.0113
. 2015. Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. New York: Zone Books.
Burish, T.G. 2018. Why we should spend more on humanities research in a high-tech world. The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 17). California State University, Dominguez Hills. 2016. Welcome to the humanities program. www4.csudh.edu/humanities/ (accessed 28 May 2018).
Campion, C. 2017. Whither the humanities? Reinterpreting the relevance of an essential and embattled field. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 17(4): 433–448. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022217730819
Caplan, B. 2018. The case against education: Why the education system is a waste of time and money. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.23943/9781400889327
Cassuto, L. 2017. The job-market moment of digital humanities. The Chronicle of Higher Education January 22: 1–4.
Chomsky, N. 1999. Profit over people: Neoliberalism and global order. New York: Seven Stories Press.
Classen, A. 2014. The challenges of the humanities, past, present, and future: Why the middle ages mean so much for us today and tomorrow. Humanities 3(1): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3390/h3010001
Collini, S. 2012. What are universities for? London: Penguin.
Frey, T. 2014. 101 endangered jobs by 2030. https://www.futuristspeaker.com/businesstrends/101-endangered-jobs-by-2030/ (accessed 13 May 2018).
Giroux, H.A. 2004. Public pedagogy and the politics of neo-liberalism: Making the political more pedagogical. Policy Futures in Education 2(3&4): 494–503. https://doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2004.2.3.5
Griffith, B.C. and Small, H.G. 1983. The structure of the social and behavioural sciences literature. Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technology Library.
Harvey, D. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. IPPTN (Institut Penyelidikan Pendidikan Tinggi Negara). 2003. Kajian masalah pengangguran di kalangan siswazah: Laporan akhir. Pulau Pinang: IPPTN.
. 2018. Constructing Malaysia’s future higher education scenarios in the fourth industrial revolution. A framework for educational leaders to shape the future of higher education in a challenging and changing world. Pulau Pinang: IPPTN.
Keen, P. 2014. Imagining what we know: The humanities in a utilitarian age. Humanities 3(1): 73–87. https://doi.org/10.3390/h3010073
KOPPA. 2017. Publication culture in different disciplines. https://koppa.jyu.fi/avoimet/kirjasto/en/library-tutorial/finding-sources/publication-culture (accessed 15 May 2018).
Mahathir, M. 1991. Wawasan 2020. Kuala Lumpur: Prime Minister’s Department Malaysia.
McCumber, J. 2016. How humanities can help fix the world. The Chronicle of Higher Education (October 2).
Mulholland, J. 2010. It’s time to stop mourning the humanities. The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 1).
Rose Alinda, A. 2018. A future ready curriculum framework for academic programme transformation. Paper presented at the Excellence in Teaching and Learning Seminar Series 2/2018, Penang, Malaysia, 27 April.
Rosen, G. 2014. The humanities have a PR problem. Princeton Alumni Weekly (July 9).
Rossi, A. 2014. Ivory tower. Documentary film. Directed by Andrew Rossi. United States: CNN Films. School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia. n.d. Background and philosophy. https://humanities.usm.my/index.php/discover-us/overview/backgroundphilosophy (accessed 29 May 2018).
Schwab, K. 2016. The fourth industrial revolution: What it means, how to respond. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-whatit-means-and-how-to-respond/ (accessed 14 August 2017).
Scott, P. 2009. Foreword. In Academic research and researchers, eds. A. Brew and L. Lucas, xiii–xviii. Berkshire: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press. Small, H. 2013. The value of the humanities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199683864.001.0001
Smyth, J. 2018. The toxic university. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Steig, M. 1986. The origin and development of scholarly historical periodicals. Alabama: University of Alabama Press.
Stover, J. 2017. There is no case for the humanities. American Affairs 1(4): 210–224.
The Guardian. 2016. Fourth industrial revolution brings promise and peril for humanity. https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2016/jan/24/4th-industrialrevolution-brings-promise-and-peril-for-humanity-technology-davos (accessed 28 May 2018).
Walford, G. 2008. The nature of educational ethnography. In How to do educational ethnography, ed. G. Walford, 1–15. London: Tufnell Press.
Willets, D. 2013. In the race for scientific prowess we mustn’t leave the arts behind. The Guardian (18 August).
World Economic Forum. 2016. The future of jobs employment, skills and workforce strategy for the fourth industrial revolution. Davos: World Economic Forum.
Zakaria, F. 2015. In defense of a liberal education. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.