261organizations are essential for the field, as they create a community of researchers
and practitioners, are hubs of communication and often sponsor journals, books,
research and other reports. These important organizational units must therefore
build their strength through research and service and be able to attract significant
sums of research grants from other institutions, including the government, in order
to have the autonomy to pursue more comprehensive research agendas.
In addition, national organizations such as IPPTN and PenDaPaT can be change
agents working at the system level to assist in building bridges between researchers,
practitioners and policymakers. This effort requires the institute and the association
to become more familiar with researchers in higher education and to use their annual
conferences and publications to make practitioners aware of the importance of
research in informing their practice and policy development. The change of status
of IPPTN from a research arm of MoHE to a centre of excellence, an entity endorsed
by the USM senate, will hopefully not only give the institute greater autonomy to
undertake research based on its research agenda but also enable it to offer post-
graduate programmes. As an academic entity, it will also help to resolve the issues
relating to lack of theory and methodology in its work.
Finally, higher education research as a specialized field is still struggling for
recognition. Malaysian research reports on higher education do not attract a lot of
attention in the academic world nor from the public. Most often, the media and the
public are more interested in the Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA) research reports which have little to do with higher education except in the
preparation of teachers. In the last 10 years, there has been a growing interest in
university rankings, which is generally limited to the same question of why so few
of the public universities are ranked in the top 100 institutions. There is certainly a
need to improve public appreciation of science and how research in higher educa-
tion can benefit the institution, the government and the society. The key question is
how to make higher education research findings newsworthy to the higher education
stakeholders and to the public. Research findings in higher education in Malaysia
need to be more broadly accessible (in terms of both language and visibility) to
institutional managers, policymakers and the public. IPPTN and PenDaPaT should
articulate ideas and research findings on policy and practice as well as interpret a
holistic array of issues from varying perspectives to the media and the public to dis-
seminate knowledge about higher education. Both organizations must continue to
conduct workshops, seminars, conferences and other outreach opportunities, and
publish more actively, to create environments for the formation and sustenance of
an epistemic community in higher education.
Concluding Remarks/Epilogue
Within a matter of one decade and a half, higher education research in Malaysia has
achieved impressive progress and has grown steadily. However, many issues have
yet to be addressed; many challenges need to be met, both from the field’s internal
14 Higher Education as a Field of Study in Malaysia: Towards an Epistemic...