254
Conrad and Gunter ( 2000 ), some higher education research projects have produced
narrow, fragmented and straightforward products that fail to provide compelling
impressions of the higher education landscape. They argued that inadequate training
of new researchers leads to what Colbeck ( 2000 ) describes as the unintelligible
nature of higher education research.
We argue that in the first five years after the first national higher education trans-
formation plan, much funding was allocated to research on higher education with
some side-effects associated with this positive movement. Firstly, repetition of proj-
ects was commonplace; and secondly, most of the studies are of low quality with
little contribution to sound policy and new theory. Realistically, some of the side-
effects were inevitable, given the lack of expertise, new tradition and the research
situation of higher education in Malaysia. In addition, we argue that the MoHE,
through its various organizations, tends to commission a proliferation of ad hoc
studies produced by teams of researchers that form and reform in order to bid for
one competitive grant after another. Ultimately, the criticism levelled against the
higher education policy research projects was that they did not seem to do much to
advance the field and the policy and practice.
While the document analysis of approved research projects does not provide use-
ful descriptions and analyses of the research project processes and outcomes, we
argue that a number of issues in higher education policy research funded by the
MoHE are prevalent. These include lack of theory building, inadequate methodol-
ogy, divorce of theory from practice, repetition of projects and few quality outputs
in terms of publications. In sum, higher education research is still heavily embedded
in policy and practice questions, being more concerned with the external factors of
higher education research that have influenced and shaped the field. The implication
of having studies in higher education predominantly oriented heavily towards pol-
icy will mean that little is on theory building and methodology.
Publication
As in the case of the number of graduate programmes, significant discrepancies are
found among specialized journals on higher education. Many of the education jour-
nals address school teachers’ issues and tend to specialize in educational research.
As domestic readership has not reached a critical mass, there are not many journals
in the field of higher education research or policy in Malaysia except for two jour-
nals, namely, the Asian Journal of University Education (AJUE) and the ASEAN
Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (AJTLHE). The AJUE is
published twice a year by the Asian Centre for Research on University Learning and
Teaching (ACRULeT), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). The journal which
started in 2005 publishes research and discussion on all aspects of university educa-
tion such as internationalization of higher education, teaching methodology, learn-
ing styles, assessment, curriculum development, educational leadership, educational
management and administration, leadership, gender issues and quality assurance in
N. Azman and M. Sirat