Lecturer Challenges University’s KPI-Policies: The Judgment in Azlianor v Universiti Teknikal Melaka

 A Lecturer Challenges Unilateral KPI-Driven Policies

Azlianor v UTeM[1] is a rare instance of a university lecturer resorting to legal action to challenge a university’s exercise of its power over its academic staff.

The High Court, however, dismissed her application after the university amended and reissued the circulars, rendering the dispute “academic”[2]. Because of this, the judgment may not bind future cases in any strong way.

However, despite its limited precedential weight, the judgment reveals how Malaysian courts currently understand university autonomy, academic regulation, and the governance structures created by the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 (UUCA). By treating the matter as an administrative dispute, the Court missed an opportunity to examine the special character of the UUCA university as a self‑governing academic community where decisions are made through collegial processes, unlike government departments or other statutory bodies.

The applicant, a senior lecturer at UTeM, applied for judicial review of the university’s decision to impose new KPI requirements, including mandatory publication in indexed journals such as Scopus and Web of Science.

She applied to the High Court for judicial review of the university’s decision on the long‑established grounds of irrationality, unreasonableness, and procedural impropriety, with the further allegation that the changes were introduced mid‑year for immediate implementation in that same year. As stated earlier, the High Court dismissed her application.

Historically, judicial review was only concerned with the decision‑making process where the impugned decision is flawed on the ground of procedural impropriety, i.e., the decision did not follow prescribed procedures. However, over the years, our courts have made inroads into this field of administrative law. The Federal Court in a landmark case[3], held that the decision of inferior tribunals, such as the authorities of a university may be reviewed on the grounds of “illegality”, “irrationality” and “proportionality”, not only on the decision-making process but also on the merits, thus allowing the courts to scrutinise a decision not only for process but also for substance. The upshot of this approach is that an application for judicial review can now examine both procedure and substance of an official decision‑making body or person.

Any person, such as the senior lecturer in this case, who is adversely affected by the decision, action, or omission in relation to the exercise of the public duty or function is entitled to apply for a judicial review.

Summary of the Applicant’s Case

The applicant argued that the two KPI circulars were procedurally improper because they bypassed the Majlis Bersama Jabatan (MBJ), the staff–management forum established under JPA’s 2020 service circular. She contended that the lack of engagement and consultation rendered the circulars invalid and further, that they contravened sections 8 and 26 of the UUCA and section 4(r) of the university’s Constitution.

Substantively, she argued that the mandatory Scopus publication requirement was unreasonable, ignored lecturers’ many other duties, and imposed a punitive score cap of 79.99%. She also highlighted procedural defects: the minutes approving PP 11/2024 were issued after the circular took effect, and PP 23/2024 was not approved by the University’s Board as required. Finally, she asserted that the circulars violated her constitutional rights and imposed an excessive workload, with an unrealistic nine‑month deadline to produce an indexed article.

Autonomy Is Not the Whole Story

The Court emphasised the autonomy of the university and the Vice‑Chancellor. Autonomy is indeed a core principle: it protects universities from political interference. But autonomy is not the only principle embedded in the UUCA. The Act’s Schedule Constitution distributes authority across a wide range of bodies, such as the Board, the Senate, faculties, centres, committees, reflecting a model of governance built on shared deliberation.

This is not accidental. A university is a community of scholars. Its academic policies are meant to emerge from discussion, critique, and collective judgment. Collegial decision-making is therefore not an abstract ideal; it underlies the manner in which Malaysian public universities are governed.

While the Court emphasized the autonomy of the university and the Vice-Chancellor, this external independence is only one facet of the UUCA framework. Autonomy is a foundational principle that shields universities from political interference, yet it does not grant unchecked administrative power, even to the Vice-Chancellor. The UUCA’s Scheduled Constitution explicitly distributes authority across a diverse matrix of statutory bodies—including the Board, the Senate, faculties, centres, and committees. This deliberate statutory design establishes a system of checks and balances, codifying a model of governance rooted in shared deliberation rather than top-down executive command.

This distribution of power is a clear recognition that a university is fundamentally a community of scholars. Academic and institutional policies are legally and structurally designed to emerge from rigorous peer discussion, critique, and collective judgment. Collegial decision-making underlies the lawful governance of Malaysian public universities, ensuring that institutional autonomy from external actors is matched by internal democracy and shared academic responsibility. The UUCA Schedule Constitution even provides for the resolution of disputes between the Authorities of the University (or between an officer and an Authority) regarding the scope of their powers, functions, or jurisdiction may be referred to the Minister, who may determine the matter or appoint an independent Dispute Resolution Panel.[4]

Azlianor’s complaint that the KPI circulars were issued without discussion goes to the heart of the collegial principle. Even if the Majlis Bersama Jabatan (MBJ) was not the correct forum, her grievance was fundamentally about the absence of collegial processes. KPI circulars that directly affect academic work — teaching, research, publication — should logically be deliberated by the Senate. The Court did not consider this. By treating the university as a hierarchical bureaucracy, the judgment ignored the collegial foundations of academic governance.

The Scopus Requirement: A Missed Opportunity for Substantive Review

The Court accepted UTeM’s justification that requiring publication in Scopus‑indexed journals would improve institutional performance. But it did so without asking a basic question: Does publication in Scopus truly measure academic quality or excellence?

Research from the National Higher Education Research Institute (IPPTN)[5] suggests otherwise. As its Issues Paper notes, citation‑based metrics are “simply a measure of visibility (not necessarily positive) and misleadingly used as a proxy for impact.” A paper may be widely cited because it is controversial or flawed; high‑quality work in niche fields may receive few citations. Scopus measures attention, not quality.

The IPPTN paper also warns that once a metric becomes a performance indicator, “it ceases to be a good measure.” Academics naturally shift their behaviour to maximise the metric rather than the underlying academic purpose. A mandatory Scopus requirement risks encouraging quantity over substance, salami‑slicing of publications, and choosing topics that are “publishable” rather than meaningful.

More troublingly, global indexing systems are owned by commercial entities such as Elsevier and Clarivate, which have “replaced the peer/expert colleagues in deciding what excellence is.” In other words, the KPI outsources the definition of academic excellence to private corporations, a move that sits uneasily with the university’s mission to advance knowledge for society.

Under the expanded scope of judicial review recognised by Malaysian courts, the High Court could have examined not only the procedure but also the substance of the KPI. It could have asked whether a one‑size‑fits‑all publication requirement is realistic across disciplines, or whether it distorts academic priorities. These questions were not explored.

What Makes a University a University

These omissions matter because they touch on the very nature of the university. A university is not merely a place that grants degrees or produces research outputs. It is a distinctive kind of institution built on shared inquiry, intellectual independence, and collective responsibility for the advancement of knowledge.

Its governance structures such as the Senate, academic boards, committees, exist to ensure that academic decisions are made through deliberation among scholars. When these structures are bypassed, the university begins to resemble a government department: efficient perhaps but stripped of the intellectual culture that defines its purpose.

A Narrow View of the University

In the end, the Court’s decision affirms autonomy but overlooks collegiality. It upholds managerial authority but ignores the academic community. It treats the university as a public agency rather than a self‑governing institution dedicated to knowledge.

If this trend continues, Malaysian universities risk losing the very qualities that make them universities.

The Azlianor case was an opportunity to reaffirm the principles of collegial governance. It was not taken. The responsibility now falls to academics, policymakers, and civil society to insist that our universities remain what they were meant to be: autonomous, yes, but autonomous in the service of a collegial, self‑governing pursuit of knowledge.

 

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[1] [2025] MLRHU 1902

[2] A court decides a case is academic when the underlying controversy has disappeared, the remedy sought is no longer meaningful, or the court’s intervention would be purely theoretical rather than resolving a live dispute.

[3] R Rama Chandran v. Industrial Court of Malaysia & Anor 1996] 1 MELR 71; 1996] 1 MLRA 725; 1997] 1 MLJ 145.

[4] See Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 (Act 30), First Schedule, section 33.

[5] https://ipptn.usm.my/images/issues_paper/05_IPPTN_Issues_Paper-Quality_Excellence_and_Impact.pdf

Listen: The Cosmos is Talking to You

The universe is not just out there. We are part of it. Learn to talk to the universe, and it will talk to you. 

Usually, we don't bother. We wake up in the morning, look out the window, and what we see simply tells us whether it is about to rain or it is going to be a hot day. We take these and other signs for granted. We treat the cosmos as if it were indifferent to our presence.

But when I was growing up in a remote village in India, there was a livelier conversation with the surroundings. I remember instances when I would see an uncle of mine setting out for the day, only to turn around and march quickly back into the house. "It is a bad day," he would announce with absolute certainty. He had seen a cow urinating outside the house, and that was simply not propitious. The universe had sent him a blunt, rather unglamorous message, and he was smart enough to heed it.

Yet, the universe doesn't only send stop signs. Nor are the signs so fixed that you can’t modify them. When my older sister got married, my mother deliberately took control of the dialogue. She arranged for a cow to be brought right to our front gate, ensuring its face was welcoming the newlyweds. To her, the cow was a sacred symbol of fertility and abundance, a joyful greeting from the cosmos for the newlywed woman. 

In Batang Berjuntai, a small town on the road to Kuala Selangor, businesses don’t start until a white cow with painted horns is brought to their doors.

In our world, a single cow could rewrite your entire day, depending entirely on which end of it you happened to encounter.

Years later, far from the familiar places of my childhood, I met a man from the rainforests of Sarawak who possessed this same cosmic literacy. He read the day’s bird calls and flights as effortlessly as a city-dweller reads the morning newspapers. He was listening to the Beburong, the traditional omen system of the Iban people. To him, the jungle wasn't just a wall of trees and noise; it was a daily gossip column from the gods. If the tiny Ketupong bird gave a sharp, single cry, it was a cosmic warning telling you to stop what you were doing. If the Beragai bird laughed brightly, the universe was giving you its blessing to move forward. Like my mother and my uncle, this man knew that nature was an alphabet, and the world was constantly typing out messages.

For generations, traditional fishermen in Kerala have faced the volatile Arabian Sea without satellite data, relying entirely on the universe to signal the arrival of the massive Southwest Monsoon. They read the subtext of the landscape long before the first raindrop falls. They watch columns of ants marching upward to deposit their eggs on higher ground, and observe low-swarming dragonflies blanket the coastline. To these seasoned mariners, the sea itself changes its scent, and the wind shifts its syntax. They are not just predicting the weather; they are listening to a vast ecosystem of living alarm clocks, coordinating their lives with a highly synchronised cosmic rhythm.

If we elevate our gaze from the sea to the night sky, we find the grandest version of this dialogue: astrology. Long before it was reduced to generalised newspaper horoscopes, true astrology was humanity's original method of decoding the sky. It was built on the understanding that the positions of stars and planets are not distant, meaningless rocks floating in a vacuum. Instead, the macrocosm above is intimately bound to the microcosm below. As above, so below. The cosmic alignment was read as a celestial map of active energy, broadcasting the emotional and physical tides of our collective reality.

If you explain all this to a modern, hyper-rational person, they will smile and call it whimsical superstition. If you explain it to a linguist, they will call it semiotics—the study of how we decode signs and symbols. They would say the cow, the bird, the ants, and the stars are merely "signifiers" onto which we paint our own meanings.

But if you ask Federico Faggin, the legendary physicist who invented the microprocessor, he might tell you that my village elders, the man from Sarawak, and the Kerala fishermen were actually practising advanced quantum mechanics.

For a long time, classical science told us the universe is a cold, dead machine made of separate pieces of matter bumping into each other. In that lonely view, an Iban bird, an Indian cow, or a planet millions of miles away has absolutely nothing to do with human destiny. But Faggin’s revolutionary work in quantum consciousness shatters that illusion. He proposes that consciousness isn't something confined inside our skulls; it is the very fabric of reality. The universe is a single, deeply interconnected whole, and physical matter—the trees, the birds, the cows, and our own bodies—is simply the "user interface" that consciousness uses to show us meaning.

At the deep, quantum level, we are completely entangled with everything around us. There is no "us" and an "external universe." We are parts of the same living organism.

When we realise this, the whimsy of my childhood village becomes a profound truth. My uncle turning back from the cow's posterior, my mother welcoming the bride, the Sarawak elder listening to the canopy, and the astrologers tracing the stars weren't engaging in silly folklore—they were experiencing the literal reality of quantum entanglement. Because we are connected to the whole, our internal paths, doubts, and fears are mirrored perfectly in the behaviour of the world around us.

The universe talks back to us because it is us, continuously writing its daily newspaper to help its parts remember how to stay in touch. So tomorrow morning, when you look out your window, don't just check the weather. Say hello. And pay attention to what clears your path. Or blocks it.

Academia-Industry Collaboration: Report on the PR Seminar and a Proposal for a Permanent Forum

The recent seminar, "Bridging Academia and Industry for the Future of Communications," organised by the Public Relations Practitioners Society of Malaysia, marks an important milestone in academia-industry collaboration.

The organisers deserve high praise for their timely initiative in establishing a platform for a dialogue that is critical to higher education in our times. Bringing together regulatory bodies, corporate agencies, and higher educational institutions created a forum for rare and much-needed discourse between the two sectors. However, the dialogue also brought to light deep-seated frustrations and misunderstandings on both sides. It was clear that to bridge the gap between higher education and the modern workplace, there has to be a clear analysis of these friction points and a need to move past mutual blame towards structured, shared solutions.

The Academic Dilemma: Digital Disruption and Structural Rigidities

During the panel discussions and the culminating Roundtable, educators spoke candidly about the shifting dynamics within higher education lecture halls. A primary frustration centred on a perceived decline in student engagement, with educators noting that many students lean toward shortcuts—particularly by utilising generative AI platforms to compile essays and term papers. Over-reliance on AI directly causes cognitive offloading, where students bypass the mental "struggle" necessary to build strong neural pathways for problem-solving and critical thinking. When students use AI to generate immediate answers rather than reasoning through a problem, they transition from active learners to passive consumers.

Furthermore, the seminar highlighted a consensus among academics that the traditional, multi-year university degree structure requires urgent modernisation. The closures of higher educational institutions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic showed that quality education is no longer confined to physical campuses. To match this environment, many educators advocated for a regulated move towards flexible, career-focused micro-credentials. These short courses allow individuals to master specialised market skills dynamically.

However, academics rightly pointed out that their agility in designing courses is heavily hampered by the prevailing higher education regulatory structure. The rigid quality standards and lengthy approval timelines enforced by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) mean that by the time a dynamic communication syllabus is officially accredited, the digital tools and industry realities it covers have already evolved. This regulatory lag forces courses into a uniform template, inadvertently limiting institutional innovation and worsening the challenge of maintaining industry relevance. Durability rather than relevance is the order of play.

The Industry Grievance: The "Discipline" and Work-Life Debate

On the other side of the divide, corporate representatives expressed ongoing frustration regarding the qualities of recent graduate recruits. A common, repeated grievance across the room was a perceived shift in professional commitment, with older executives noting that younger appointees increasingly prioritise a strict "work-life balance" over a total dedication to corporate hours. Within the seminar, this was frequently interpreted as a lack of fundamental workplace discipline—a deficit that many speakers emotionally attributed to changing family dynamics and a decline in traditional, authoritative parental discipline.

While these frustrations are understandable from an employer/management standpoint, the applause from a section of the audience for past authoritarian structures, including the use of the cane, reveals a profound intergenerational misunderstanding. Neither the modern university nor the contemporary corporate workplace fully grasps how the digital landscape has fundamentally altered human life and labour, or how work and the workplace are still rooted in the transitions triggered by the Industrial Revolution. These transitions are tied to physical presence, rigid hierarchy, and unquestioning compliance.

Insisting on a work-life balance is not a sign of laziness; it is a rational, highly adapted response to a hyper-connected economy. Unlike previous generations whose work permanently ended the moment they stepped out of the office, modern digital communication practitioners are tethered to their workplaces 24/7 via smartphones, Slack, and endless algorithmic notification loops. They are expected to monitor live viral feeds and manage reputational risks at any hour. Protecting personal boundaries is an act of cognitive survival, not a lack of discipline. Furthermore, in an era of zero job security and shifting corporate layouts, young professionals view career progression as a flexible network rather than a lifetime contract of blind obedience.

Issues Not Raised: Structural Blind spots and Student Agency

While the seminar dedicated significant time to the behaviour of the younger generation, it was mostly silent on the systemic crises actively reshaping the Malaysian media landscape. These critical matters were only raised briefly by a single participant from the floor, leaving a profound void in the agenda. Specifically, the seminar failed to address how the communications industry should handle volatile, identity-driven crises that have recently held major businesses hostage. The "Allah Socks" controversy, viral geopolitical boycotts targeting established franchises like McDonald's and Starbucks, and highly polarized disputes surrounding the display of the national flag were all accelerated through decentralised social media networks. These are not standard corporate public relations issues; they are explosive intersections of domestic ethnic politics and global sentiments where traditional corporate crisis management handbooks are entirely defenceless. By omitting these live-fire challenges, the seminar paradoxically avoided discussing the exact environments where future graduates will be tested.

The other glaring omission on the agenda was the complete absence of the student voice in resolving the industry-academia alignment gap. Throughout the day, students were talked about, but never talked with. They were treated purely as passive products of a pipeline rather than active stakeholders in their own education. Forward-thinking global institutions, such as the University of Cambridge, have long recognised that student-led governance and participatory curriculum design are essential for institutional resilience. Allowing students a structured, collaborative seat at the table ensures that curriculum updates reflect the lived digital realities of the younger generation. By systematically excluding student agency from the conversation, both academia and industry are ignoring the very insights needed to fix the alignment gap.

The Solution: A Permanent Forum for Industry-Academia Dialogue

If academia continues to blame students for using modern tools, and industry continues to blame families for a lack of corporate submission, both sectors will guarantee their own obsolescence. The solution cannot be resolved through once-a-year seminars or static, bureaucratic Industry Advisory Panels that simply tick an MQA compliance box.

What is needed is the establishment of a Permanent Forum for Industry-Academia Dialogue.

This proposed council, preferably with statutory authority, would function as a formal conduit operating outside rigid bureaucratic hierarchies. Crucially, the framework must allow either sector the autonomous right to call an immediate dialogue whenever a major market disruption occurs.

• When the Industry Identifies a Capability Gap: If corporate agencies find that graduates lack advanced data analytics skills, legal literacy regarding greenwashing, or real-time crisis management capabilities, they can instantly trigger a forum session to co-design micro-credentials with university deans.
• When Academia Identifies a Structural Bottleneck: If educators need to test an agile, unapproved course structure within the live-fire sandbox of a corporate agency, they can use the forum to establish credit-bearing, immediate internship pilots without waiting for years of external regulatory paperwork.
• When Student Agency Drives Innovation: Drawing inspiration from global academic benchmarks, the forum will establish a Student Advisory Council. This allows students to pitch directly to industry heads and university deans, turning the generation that natively understands technology trends from passive consumers into active co-designers of their own courses of study.

By establishing this continuous, balanced feedback loop, the education-to-employment continuum will be structurally enriched. Moving past mutual blame will allow both sectors to deeply comprehend each other's parameters, limitations, and operational realities. Ultimately, this framework challenges us to stop managing higher education as an outdated factory assembly line and start cultivating it as a highly adaptive, shared ecosystem.

The seminar was held on 18 June 2026 at the IACT College.