SMU President Professor Lily Kong delivered her third and final lecture in a series on the future of universities as part of her role as the 15th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore at the Institute for Policy Studies. In her speech on 27 Nov, she said universities must focus less on metrics such as citations and rankings and more on the societal benefits of their research. She added that a culture of “publish or perish” and a fixation on university rankings means it has become easy for them to chase “misplaced goals”. This in turn has resulted in a range of research malpractice, creating an urgent need for universities to reflect on the way such work is evaluated, Prof Kong said. Her first lecture covered the historical evolution of universities, while her second focused on rethinking key dimensions of university education, such as the traditional emphasis on cognitive development alone.