National Professors Council president Raduan Che Rose said the issue should be resolved by the respective managements, which would have a better understanding of their staff’s workload.

“There is no need for the ministry to intervene and create (new) policies. University administrators can devise the best ways to help their lecturers.

“For example, the university administration can reduce lecturers’ burden by using a hybrid model, combining physical and virtual classes… vice-chancellors need to be more creative to meet the needs of their educators,” he told FMT.

On Tuesday, higher education minister Zambry Abdul Kadir was reported to have said that the ministry will examine the need to balance the number of teaching hours for lecturers at universities.

He said the average number of teaching hours at universities was about 18 hours a week – one of the dilemmas faced by lecturers as there were other important responsibilities to be carried out as well.

Raduan said different types of universities would have different emphases, models, functions, and weightings for their lecturers.

“For example, lecturers at research universities may not have 18 teaching hours but are heavily involved in research, supervision, publishing, knowledge transfer, consulting, and industrial and community collaboration.

“For those at universities like Universiti Teknologi Mara, teaching may involve 18 hours per week with additional compensation for any extra hours,” he said.

Universiti Malaya lecturer Shamsinor Abdul Azzis said while 18 teaching hours per week was not necessarily burdensome, other obligations such as meeting research demands, supervision, writing, and consulting had to be considered.

“The concern is that this workload could affect the quality of lectures. Perhaps the ministry could set limits on the number of students per class and the number of teaching hours.

“A large number of students adds to the burden of grading assignments and decreases quality when there are too many in a single class,” he said.