Thursday, January 12, 2023

Averting a UiTM tragedy

Bangsar, 12 Jan: At the UiTM’s faculty of communications and media studies’ 50th anniversary celebration last October, vice chancellor Dr Roziah Mohd Janor pooped the party by announcing the merger of the faculty with two unrelated disciplines; namely, the Computer Science & Mathematics faculty and the Information Management faculty. Everyone was dumbfounded. Protests qucikly followed. 

Last week, the poor VC gave in to pressure from the faculty’s alumni: she promised to undo the merger. But it would take three to six months before the mistake can be “dismantled”, according to news reports.

You may call this merger-demerger whatever. In one word, I’ll call it regressive. A waste of everyone’s time and resources. Ngabih  boreh.

If this ill-conceived merger is not reversed, it will be a tragedy.

When I enrolled into the faculty in 1982, UiTM was still just an “institute” but its School of Mass Communications, the brainchild of some of hte country’s finest intellects, was churning out quality journalists, broadcasters, pr practitioners and advertising execs. Today the faculty’s influence on the country’s media landscape is indisputable.

The varsity should be looking into ways to expand its comms and media studies faculty’s capabilites in order to address the various challenges posed by social media, cyber security, and tiktok. Its comms faculty should be leading national efforts to help the nation deal with cyber security issues, fake news, online scams, 

Read also: After UKM, now UiTM stops pro-democracy forum

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