THE new semester has just started this week at the private university where I ply my trade as an academic. And although I’ve been in this industry for almost 18 years, I still find it exciting when a semester begins, before the assignments and deadlines press in.

Considering I stumbled into this profession by chance, I’m grateful to have found a vocation that is meaningful to and leverages on the different lives I lead. Contrary to popular belief, even though I also ply my trade as a troubadour in the music circuit and subculture, I don’t teach music. I teach in the filmmaking and performing arts programmes.

Most make this assumption because, well, it’s kind of the norm to link someone’s vocation to their area of expertise and assume that being an expert (or having vast experience in a particular field), one would also teach in the area of expertise. I’m an “interdisciplinary” creature – a term that was once not much in style when “specialisation” was in trend – but has taken on more resonance in this increasingly converging world. 

On paper, the field in which I am academically qualified is film and television production and journalism – double major in mass communication degree programme – as that was what the university I signed up with in Perth, Australia offered and I had an array of majors I could pick and choose from such as photography, advertising, public relations, and marketing.

It’s safe to say the last three majors were the ones most popular with Asian international students (and still is in Malaysia) although some of my fellow Southeast Asian cohorts did balance creative majors with more “practical” ones such as the combos of film and television production and advertising, or journalism and public relations or advertising and photography.

I was the only Malaysian in my double major combo and the only other person a Singaporean. I learnt a lot more about our neighbouring country through my Singaporean classmate with whom I quickly became close friends through our rebel mindset and love for the grunge rock band Pearl Jam (who performed in Perth in 1998 after fans petitioned them to add the city onto their Australian tour which initially excluded Perth).

To be honest, with the benefit of hindsight, I did not really know what I was doing during my time in university except what I needed to do to pass my subjects. It wasn’t out of disinterest – it was just that there was so much going on in my life on- and off-campus (no, not partying) that I failed to grasp the bigger picture except for the idea that these were the skills I needed to get a job.

It only made sense later when I pursued my Masters (also in Australia, this time in Melbourne, which felt like New York to me after the pre-mining boom backwater of 1990s Perth) and I suspect most of my students through the years probably felt the same too.

It makes absolute sense to me now as a multi-hyphenate individual who transgresses across different fields of work where wearing different hats is not just a norm but a must. The street mall where I regularly busked at was my parallel “university” education in which I was the only enrolled student. 

University is merely a formal method of learning with specific aims and outcomes. Learning is lifelong and we never stop learning – knowledge awaits around every corner.

If one has the opportunity or privilege to choose a major in university, one might feel the need to match the programme with some practical outcome of the sizeable investment tertiary education is.

This is even more so the case now with hyperactive higher education advertising promising a variety of things that is slowly but surely misleading what universities are about. It’s not about “guaranteed jobs”, “becoming CEOs”, or the “top ranking” that matters.

It’s about understanding what research and learning is – including making mistakes and being allowed to make them along the way – through the specific fields of study or vocation since it’s really impossible to learn “everything”.

Universities are labs for ideas to germinate, not merely channels for indoctrination of industrial ethos. The direction in which higher education has turned into a competitive business has inadvertently made the expectations of students and parents alike into something akin to buying a property or car or at worse like ordering a fast-food set meal – that the “customer is always right” – one of material exchange, not knowledge-seeking for knowledge’s sake.

One does not learn anything that way. Higher education, which we must accept begrudgingly, is already within the capitalist ecosystem and is becoming indistinct from other so-called goods and services sectors if academics do not see themselves more than just mere “instructors”. 

This country needs intellectuals and academia is the fertile space for such seeds to grow from. 

Academics who fall into the “makan gaji” mindset should consider a career change if they have an ethical bone in them.  

Personally, my primary goal is to guide students into principled, independent, and empathetic human beings and citizens – qualities that will hopefully enable them to be gainfully employed (or self-employed) while also leading a meaningful life.

Lofty aims but what is life without striving for others to be better than yourself, hence lies the conundrum of higher education in our epoch: striking the balance between utilitarian purpose and an experimental spirit while also keeping those manning the machine equally purposeful and spirited.

Being an academic is a calling, not a job. As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges lays it down: “We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.” – April 9, 2021.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.