What got you started in education in the first place?

When I graduated, I went on to postgraduate research and I was offered a job teaching. And then at some point, I started to move into managerial positions, first as a head of department of economics, and then as a dean, and then as deputy vice-chancellor and vice chancellor.

So I sort of climbed the greasy pole, if you like. And I guess once you move away from being an active teacher and researcher, there’s no way back, so you have to keep going forward.

But I’ve enjoyed it, it’s been personally very interesting, and rewarding. It’s given me massive opportunities to travel, not just to Malaysia. And surprisingly, I never expected this, but an opportunity to work in Malaysia for the last six years, minus the pandemic.

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What philosophy do you stand by when it comes to your students and education?

I believe in what works empirically and what it is that our students enjoy. So whatever it takes to help our students achieve their objectives to get the qualifications they want, but also at the same time, to have a rewarding and fulfilling experience, because there’s more to being at university than simply burying your head in a book in a library. I mean, my experience is that very often people at that stage in their life form some of the strongest relationships. But often, apart from being more independent, young people will develop networks and friendships that will last them the rest of their life. Also, trying things that you’ve never done before, whether it’s in sports or in the arts or whatever. So my approach is to say, let’s do whatever it takes.

Say it’s the beginning of the semester and you’re addressing first-year students. What would you to tell them?

Reflecting on my own experience at their age, there’s a great, great opportunity they probably will never again in their lives, have a period where they can concentrate so much on the study that they’ve chosen to do, to work hard at that, and to develop some knowledge and expertise. But also, going back to what I just said before, is that marvellous opportunity to meet people from not just Kuala Lumpur, but from right around the world to make friends with, and probably lifelong friends. So do that, and experiment.

You know, life is not a rehearsal; they need to get on and take risks as well, they’ll try some things and discover it’s not for them. It doesn’t matter, that’s just the way you learn. What I always encourage them to do is to make the most of it, to enjoy it. If they’re not enjoying it, then there’s something wrong. And work hard, but play hard as well. I think that’s the spirit I would like to encourage to the students here at Taylor’s University.

How would you describe the teaching staff at Taylor’s?

When I came in and took over at Taylor’s I was actually surprised at just how committed the teaching staff and all the other support staff were to the students and their welfare. I mean, it was something quite distinctive, because where I came from, originally research intensive universities, the students weren’t given quite the same emphasis. And that’s because in that environment, the teaching staff were rewarded and promoted according to their research, not according to how good they were at teaching. So that’s a real problem.

A lot of universities say students come first, second and third, and it’s just rhetoric. But coming to Taylor’s I found it was true here. There’s a tremendous concern for the success and the welfare, as well as the wellbeing of the students that I in my previous career had not experienced. So they are tremendous, fantastic.

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What’s your proudest moment for Taylor’s, and steps taken to achieve this ambition?

It would sound cheesy but it’s when the students graduate. Graduations are always a very uplifting event, seeing many students and their parents and their families there to celebrate the achievements of the students. But if I had to single out one thing, I suppose it’s more related to my role, in leadership and management, and that was achieving the top 100 ranking in Asia. And you know, it was such a delight to see the pride on people’s faces, when we got that in 2020.

They were over the moon; in particular our owner and patron Dato’ Loy Teik Ngan, because he’s invested so much, he’s built this wonderful campus, took a great risk, and in doing that established a very successful university. He’s passionate about education and achieving high academic standards. In fact Taylor’s been named the number one private university in Southeast Asia by the QS World University Rankings for a third year in a row, and is among the top 1% of universities in the world. And of course, this raises the university’s esteem in the eyes of employers, which helps our students, whose focus is on getting a good start in life when they graduate, to get a good career, and pursue that career for many, many years.

The coming of the Fourth Industrial Revolution will disrupt many industries. Is there a skills gap between the skills university graduates have upon completing their studies, and the skills employees are looking for?

In general what employers would ideally like is for graduates to be very specifically trained in the narrow skills that they need. But that’s not the role of the university. Specific skills are always becoming redundant and replaced by technology. But what I think important for universities to do is to enable their students to have transferable skills, like literacy and numeracy at a high level, as well as the ability to work in teams and other soft skills. Because the technology will change, the jobs will change. What you need are people who are adaptable, who have the transferable skills to be able to acquire the new specific skills they need for that particular job.

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