We thank the organizers, CIO, Google, and others, for highlighting efforts in “new media”, and those who voted for us at blogawards.pk. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank you, our readers for not only visiting us but also taking part in the conversation through your comments. The civility and quality of comments, even on some touchy subjects, has been truly exemplary. Finally, but most importantly, our gratitude goes out to our contributors. We thank you and dedicate this award to you, for stepping up to the podium and doing your part in helping us further the debate on the ‘next step forward’ in science, technology, and education in Pakistan. Thank you!

“Heinz [College at the CMU campus in] Australia began to notice a growing population of Pakistani students in its Master’s programs and that they were some of the best and brightest of their overall class.  This was supported by anecdotal evidence both in Pittsburgh and Doha and we decided to, as we say in the states, ‘check this out’,” said Bryan Tamburro, Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives at CMU, who visited Pakistan last month with Prof. Chuck Thorpe, the outgoing Dean of CMU Qatar. “I believe this growing population of top talent from Pakistan is a direct result of HEC’s efforts to increase Pakistan’s capacity to deliver world class quality higher education to its college age population (17-25).”

Bryan and Chuck visited the campuses of NUST, COMSATS, GIKI, NDU and met with the rector of IBA Karachi in Islamabad. They were impressed by the state of affairs of higher education in Pakistan, particularly in contrast to other countries in South Asia. During the trip, Bryan and Chuck also met Dr. Ata-ur-Rehman, former Chairman of the HEC, Dr. Khurram Afridi, Project Director of the LUMS SSE, and with Dr. Sohail Naqvi, the Executive Director of the HEC.

Bryan said that, given his experiences throughout South Asia over the past twelve years, he had tempered expectations for what they would experience in Pakistan. But, he was pleasantly surprised by what they found after their visit. “I was wrong! I believe that the HEC, through nationalizing the accreditation process of Higher Education for Pakistan, has made significant progress in addressing the nation’s capacity issue, while strengthening facilities and with an incredible focus on faculty development, is succeeding where many other ‘developing nations’ are failing.”

He went on to say, “[s]imply put, you can erect a building on campus but the building doesn’t educate the student the faculty member does and that, for some reason, is the one thing strangely missing in many nations efforts to build quality higher education. This is the significant accomplishment of the HEC that helps separate Pakistan from other nations.”

Currently, administrators at CMU are considering avenues of sustainable collaboration with various Pakistani Institutions. Carnegie Mellon currently has presence in a number of countries, including Qatar, Portugal, Japan, Australia, and Cyprus, offering graduate and undergraduate courses.

Editor’s note: We previously reported that the visitors met with Prime Minister Gillani. While they were scheduled to meet, the meeting was canceled due to the Prime Minister’s scheduling conflicts.

In an effort to enforce quality, the HEC recently announced that they would not recognize PhD degrees awarded unless the recipient manages to score a 40 percentile on the GRE subject test at the time of admission to the graduate program, reported here. This is a revision of HEC’s earlier policy, announced four years back, that the GRE subject test must be cleared before submitting the thesis. The announcement has proven controversial among PhD instructors and their students.

The controversy spilled over in Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU), where the QAU syndicate and the QAU academic council are split over the issue (reported here). Dr. Sohail Naqvi, Executive Director of the HEC, was challenged by protesters during his visit to the QAU campus. Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy, the chairman of the Physics department at QAU, supports the initiative by the HEC and recently wrote in its defense; we have shared his article here.

So, should PhD students need to clear the GRE before being awarded their PhDs?

LUMS has been shut down for a week. And as I said to a friend, maybe it’s a good thing. Because we, the ones at LUMS, are so disconnected from Pakistan, that it had to take the death of seven students, seven of our people, to make us pause our movies and type google news instead of facebook in our urls. Because with the divide between classes here, it’s as if Pakistan is two countries; one where all the news comes from, bombs, stampedes at ration lines, acid attacks, rapes and one where LUMS is, where people (even a few crazy women) can walk the clean quiet streets of defence and cantt, where people dine in every increasing style, where the only effects of terrorism are a few tiresome roadblocks and the echos of blasts far far away. Terrorism has reached our country now and we are slightly disturbed at it.

So finally the budding intellectuals of Pakistan have turned their attention to this problem that they had heard about but never really experienced before this. But this turned out to be a problematic exercise for me. Ask me what I want to see in this country. And I can flood your ears with concepts such as pluralism, freedom, justice, democracy, even anarchism in the style of Noam Chomsky. But ask me, “how do you get to there, from here?” And I am mute. And my hands drop uselessly to my sides. Or rather, they go up and cover my eyes because there is no point of sight when you can’t move.

My philosophy won’t work here because I know what I want but I have no way to make it happen.

I want these killings to end. I want the discourse to become more nuanced than “Islamic terrorism”. I want people to realize that all Muslims aren’t killers and that to say so, even as a joke, is to open the door to a dangerous generalization. I want Muslims to be able to criticize Israel on it’s war crimes without being attacked as fundamentalists. I want Muslims to stop defending what’s happening in our country and stop using conspiracy theories to deflect blame onto the US and its cronies. I want things to become less simplistic. But it can’t happen. Because there are certain interests for USA in creating the image of a Muslim terrorist. Because there is a certain complacency in the Muslim attribution of blame to the west. We all want to blame someone because then the responsibility to fix the problem is placed on whoever is blamed. And man is inherently lazy.

I want the people of Pakistan to be united. But for so many groups with so many nationalist claims to unite under one banner or one leader or even one party is impossible.

I want Pakistan to be partitioned into it’s four provinces. But for that to take place without bloodshed is a myth unheard of in our part of the World. And then there is the problem of our geographical location. A problem that we refer to with a mixture of pride and sorrow. The problem is that we are essential to too many interests. We are a troublesome neighbor to far too many important countries for those interests to allow us to divide for internal peace. Better a war ridden Pakistan than four small states who don’t border all those territories that actually matter to the World.

I want us to not think in terms of nationalism and patriotism. Because what use are these constructs? Why is a fellow Pakistani worth anymore than someone who just happens to be born in Iran or India? Why can’t we cherish human life and human development regardless of which boundary it occurs in? We cannot because such trajectories of thinking have never been offered to us. We cannot because if every Pakistani began to think of him or herself as an individual and began to work for their own benefit, all Pakistan would get is a slap from the invisible hand. Individualism abroad means greater progress because there are structures in which that individualism is exercised. Here, individualism is destruction. It is individualism that makes so many LUMS students rejoice that our university has closed in the middle of exams, because they hadn’t studied and would have scored “below the mean” in a course. Yes, there are Pakistanis who are rejoicing in this moment.

I want such Pakistanis, all Pakistanis to realize what it means to be at war. I want us to work. Ceaselessly. Because work alone can produce results and yes, it might be a Western concept to cherish work oh-so-much instead of sipping tea with the family but I want us to realize that tea and drawing room chats won’t do anything for us. But we can’t. Because when we go to school we die; when we talk out loud, we disappear; when we write, they write back threats. And why should we work? Why should we bother, sitting in our generator powered homes, surfing the net on our shiny laptops, going to cafes and stealing kisses on campus? Of course the greatest issue for LUMS to consider is kissing on campus. Of course. Because what effect does Pakistan’s appalling Gender Equity Index ratings have on a campus where women make up nearly half the student body? What effect do rising food prices have for us, with our regulated cafeteria prices?

So maybe it is good that LUMS has shut down for a week. But will this week change anything, I wonder? An essay here, a comment there. And this week will pass. And the rat race within LUMS will begin again. And you and I, as rational actors, will realize that nothing we do can help Pakistan and we should simply help ourselves by burying our heads in our imported traditions, getting the grades and rushing abroad the first chance we get.

I want things to change. But they won’t. Because we are stuck, you and I and scores like us. And I don’t know how we can get unstuck.

STEP: How did the idea of this study come about?

The idea for the article actually originated from Nature’s Editors late last year when HEC’s budgets and utility were being increasingly questioned by the new government in Islamabad. Nature had been an observer – and sometimes a commentator on HEC’s initiatives – and approached me to see if I’d be interested in writing an independent and objective piece on Pakistan’s Higher Education Reforms. I worked with Nature’s editors to put together a group of authors who we believed brought a diversity of experience, insight, and credibility to this exercise.

This preliminary review, I hope, will be a starting point towards an extensive process of external policy peer review and a constructive self-examination leading to greater effectiveness of higher education policies and programmes in Pakistan. Another very important aspect of Nature’s interest in this work was to see if other countries contemplating similar reforms could learn some lessons from Pakistan.

STEP: How long did the study take? What data sources and methodologies were used?

We began working on this subject with the Nature piece in mind about 8-9 months ago. Obviously, the first step was to approach HEC itself and to seek their cooperation in doing this. There was really no point in saying anything on the subject without having access to HEC’s own data and viewpoint.

We had excellent cooperation from Dr. Atta Ur Rahman as well as Dr. Sohail Naqvi and other members of HEC staff. In addition to HEC, I also met and talked to a number of university leaders as well as HEC’s critics including Dr. Hoodbhoy. Dr. Naqvi made available to us a lot of data that we believe had not been publicly available in this manner before. We were cognizant, however, that this is self-reported data and that any conclusions we will make based on this data alone are going to be fiercely challenged by HEC’s critics.

In order to balance HEC’s own view, we also used external data to validate the claims made by HEC. Specifically, we decided to use Thomson Reuters’ data on scientific publications as independent measure of Pakistan’s publication activity and impact. We must emphasize, though, our analysis is merely a start. One of our key recommendations is for HEC to subject itself to an independent external peer review of its policies and programmes and use their guidance to improve these. This peer review must also include taking a look the current data at hand and the data collection systems in place and to improve these to provide continuous guidance to HEC planners.

STEP: What was the most important (or surprising) finding of the study?

I believe that this is still a work in progress as Pakistan’s reform experiment is itself a work in progress. I won’t speak for other members of the team here, however, I was personally surprised by quite a few findings. First of all, there does seem to be an unambiguous improvement in Pakistan’s publishing performance as well as its relative impact. The publications have tripled over the last few years and there are significant gains in relative impact of Pakistani papers. Our preliminary testing shows that this finding is not too influenced by self-citation bias. One negative finding – though not unsurprising – was the decline in the publishing performance in social sciences (and business and management and humanities etc.). This is a bit alarming – for me – because I do believe that well developed social sciences are very important for a balanced development of a nation.

I believe that several programmes may be rightly guided – even though there may be implementation lapses. The foreign PhD programme is one example. I believe, and hope, it will deliver in the medium to long-run. The NRPU – the competitive grant funding programme – is in the right direction – although the peer review process needs to be strengthened. I think that a 47% acceptance rate is just too high – especially given that a vast majority of Pakistani faculty have not had much exposure to competitive research for considerable periods in the past. The investments in the digital library and internet connectivity are also critical elements of the research infrastructure.

On the other hand, there are still several things that are not so right. There are things that can potentially go wrong – seriously wrong – if important issues are not addressed. I am especially concerned with the policies vis-à-vis the Domestic (Indigenous) PhD programme. That is certainly something that should be subjected to greater scrutiny and evaluation from both outside and inside of HEC. Also governance and management reforms within universities have been rather slow. However, I think there is a need to take key stakeholders along rather than force it on universities.

STEP: The statistic that I found most interesting in the article is the +20% relative impact of Mathematics publications from Pakistan. However, Dr. Hoodbhoy, in his critique of your article, asked the question of whether self-citations were removed or not in computing this number. To quote Dr. Hoodbhoy, “did the authors try to eliminate self-citations (a deliberate ploy) from this count? If they had – as I did using an available option in the Thomson Scientific package – they might actually have found the opposite result.” How would you respond to this criticism?

The short answer to Dr. Hoodbhoy’s question is that no – this number includes author self-citations. BUT we were definitely concerned about self-citations. Here is what we did to account for this potential bias.

We extracted a database of roughly 13,000 papers (representing all fields) indexed by Thomson Reuters between 1999 and 2008, each listing at least one author address in Pakistan. We also extracted all papers that subsequently cited these papers. We then enumerated instances of ANY country citing into this population of papers (i.e., all nations citing Pakistan), along with a separate measure of only Pakistani authors citing Pakistani papers. We did this for two distinct time periods: for papers published and cited during 1999 to 2003, and during 2004 to 2008.

For the first time period, there were 8,436 occurrences of all nations citing the Pakistani papers (or, to repeat, those papers bearing at least one Pakistan author address), and 1,527 occurrences when Pakistan-only papers cited the group. In percent terms, 1,527 of 8,436 equals 18.1%. Thus, by this measure, Pakistan self-citation could be quantified as 18.1%. For the second time period, the comparable numbers were 26,294 instances of all countries citing the Pakistan group, and 6,597 instance of Pakistan citing Pakistan. Expressed as a percentage, the figure is 25.1%

To summarize: 18.1% Pakistan self-citation for the 1999-2003 period, and 25.1% for 2004-2008. Now it is important to understand that country self-citations are not a perfect proxy for author self-citations – the variable that we’re really interested in. However, author self-citations are a subset of country self-citations and hence country self-citations do give us an upper bound on author self-citations. That is, author self-citations for Pakistani papers are definitely less than 25.1% – and perhaps a lot less than that – in the post-reform period.

We can compare this figure with generally accepted empirical norms of author self-citation globally. In Gami et al (CMAJ, 2004) the authors estimate self-citation in diabetes research at about 18%. Falagas and Kavvadia (FASEB, 2006) arrive at self-citation rates in biomedical research at 17-20%. Others have confirmed the general trend in medical literature of around 1/5^th of all citations as being author self-citations. Garfield and Sher (1964) arrive at a self-citation figure of 20% for basic research papers. Trimble (1986) arrives at a figure of 15% for all astronomical papers. Bonzi and Snyder (1986) found an average self-citation rate of 11 per cent across a range of disciplines, varying from 16 per cent in the physical sciences (chemistry and geology) to 3 per cent in the social sciences. The frequency of self-citation is also found to be independent of quality of publication.

So, Pakistan’s likely author self-citation rates may be only slightly higher – if not within – the global norms for self-citations. It is quite unlikely that all – or even most – gains can be wiped out by author self-citations. Dr. Hoodbhoy may be right in that self-citations may have increased from the past but that is likely to be expected for a variety of reasons – some of which quite legitimate. For example, as a closely knit research community develops within a country and interact through local conferences they are more likely to be aware of each others work and hence cite authors from within the country. Had we been able to exclude self-citations from these relative impact figures, these results would perhaps have been only marginally smaller. Because we were dealing with publications across multiple disciplines over multiple time periods and across multiple countries we could not correct relative impact figures for self-citation. However, given the above analysis we don’t find a reason to feel so alarmed as to totally rubbish the entire publishing performance of the country.

Should this be an issue HEC should carefully watch and analyse? – definitely yes. Should this totally nullify the improvements in Pakistan’s publication record? – we don’t believe so.

STEP: You mentioned that a lot of data provided by the HEC was not used in the article because of the space limitations. The only real statistical analysis in the current article is the table on relative impact factors. What other metrics could have been used to scientifically analyze the performance of HEC, had space not been the limiting factor.

HEC did provide a lot of data and complied with our requests for additional data as much as it could. Potentially, data could inform a number of very interesting questions vis-à-vis the performance of higher education reforms in Pakistan. We were not able to undertake some of these analyses because of the following reasons.

First, a lot of data currently available only accounts for inputs to various programmes – number of PhDs awarded, number of fellowships granted, number of grants awarded are input data. This needs to be complemented with relevant and comparable output data so that outcome assessment can take place.

Second, for data to be useful for subsequent analyses, the analytical and evaluation plan must be built into the programme itself. It is much harder – and more expensive – to cobble together data – ex post – and come up with a very clean assessment of outcomes.

As an example of the sort of things that additional analysis could do is to assess whether the foreign faculty hiring programme (FFHP) is an effective investment. During my meetings with vice chancellors I was told that there is a backlash against FFHP from the faculty and one of the allegations is that the people recruited on FFHP are no better than some of the better faculty members available within the country. This, and several others elements of the reform, are empirical questions that could be easily addressed by intelligent use of data.

STEP: Don’t you think that the HEC is under more scrutiny (at least informally) than other government departments? For example, I don’t see any debate on the performance of, say, MINFAL. The team at HEC has, at the very least, brought about many positive changes compared to the UGC of the past. Do you think there is a chance that overly negative criticism can be counterproductive and may deter such initiatives to positively reform a government department in future?

Yes, certainly there is a chance that overly negative criticism may be counter productive. However, I believe that what we have tried to do is to present our best objective view of the reforms. I believe that it’s a pity that the debate on this important set of reforms hovers between the two extreme viewpoints. I believe that good data and analysis can really refocus this debate and turn it into constructive one. Good data and analysis can move debate away from one of opinions to one of facts.

I believe it is important to have this debate in an open, transparent, and civilized manner. Such a debate will inspire greater trust and buy-in from the people and systems this reform is seeking to address. Pakistan has invested upwards of 50 billion rupees in higher education over the last 5-7 years and it is in all our interest that we make the best use of this investment.

STEP: One of your key recommendations is for the HEC to be reviewed externally. What are some of the examples (from around the world) of the external peer-review process that you suggest HEC subject itself to? Should this process not be done through the Standing Committees on Education in the Senate and/or the National Assembly?

The process of policy peer review is well-established – especially in the west. The nearest equivalent that comes to mind is the peer reviews organized by the National Academies in the US of major government funding programmes (such as the SBIRs, ATP etc.). These are panels of eminent scientists (Academy Fellows) and relevant experts looking over various aspects of these programmes. Because of the unique circumstances and pervasive nature of HEC’s programmes, HEC’s peer review would have to be done by a mix of Pakistani and internationally placed members. The findings of these reviews are then debated by legislatures who have the final say in determining policies informed by these findings and recommendations.

STEP: Based on your study, how do you compare HEC in Pakistan to other equivalent bodies in the developing countries?

I believe HEC has done a considerable amount of work in a very short period of time and some of it may have already begun to reap results as well. It has tackled a very difficult area of reform and has shaken the academic environment in Pakistan. In the depth and breadth of what it has tried to do, HEC has very few parallels in the world today. Most other relevant bodies have only tinkered with the systems that they have tried to reform. It is this factor that probably prompted Nature to invite an opinion piece from the authors and an editorial commenting on these reforms and the lessons that could be learnt by other developing countries. HEC had the liberty and resources to do so and it made the most out of it. Whether or not this hugely ambitious experiment will succeed at the expected level in the end remains an open question.

STEP: If this article is work in progress, as you have said, what further study or analysis can we expect from your team in future?

We are planning to finish a larger piece on higher education reforms in Pakistan and hopefully publish this in the near future. In addition, we intend to dialog with HEC, leading academics and academic administrators in Pakistan to explore how the suggestions in our article can be best taken forward.

Related Post: Pakistan’s Higher Education Funding Holds Many Lessons for Developing Nations: Nature

In a message on International Literacy Day, the President said the Council aimed at promoting education would include chief ministers and federal and provincial ministers of education, finance and planning as its members. … He said inequalities in education stand in the way of balanced and equitable economic development. “An illiterate labour force also adversely impacts on national harmony. A literate nation is essential for both prosperity and for the integrity and security of the nation,” he added.

President Zardari urged the educational planners to adopt a multi-pronged strategy for eradication of illiteracy and provision of basic education to all including children, youth and adults.

He said, “Together with higher priority to the formal primary education, we must also expand access to non-formal basic education programmes and launch a long term and sustainable programmes which should be purposeful so as to equip illiterate farmers, labourers, and rural women with knowledge and skills which can enhance their income and employability.”

In the same message, the President also talked about recognizing free primary education as a fundamental human right:

The President strongly recommended legislation by the Parliament to recognize and declare free primary education as a fundamental human right in the Constitution of Pakistan.

Is this a sign that, after nearly 60 years of neglect, the policy-makers are finally waking up to the need to educate the masses?

The legislation about recognizing free primary education as a fundamental human right is important because in our three attempts at writing a Constitution since independence, we have progressively come closer to this point but the state has yet to accept this as its ultimate responsibility and provide a time-frame within which full literacy is to be achieved. Dr. Usman Ali Isani’s PhD thesis on the Higher Education in Pakistan provides valuable historical perspective on this issue. In it, he describes how the Objective Resolution fails to mention education as a guaranteed fundamental right and the first Constitution of 1956 only mandates that the state provide “basic necessities of life, such as food, clothing, housing, education and medical relief” to those citizens who are “permanently or temporarily unable to earn their livelihood”.

Progress was made in the 1962 Constitution where, in laying down the Principles of Policy, the Constitution says: “Illiteracy should be eliminated, and free and compulsory primary education should be provided for all, as soon as is practicable” (Article 7). By not setting a deadline, the State effectively kicked the proverbial can down the road.

The Constitution of 1973 restated the eradication of illiteracy as a Principle of Policy in almost identical terms, by stating in Article 37(b):

[The State shall:]

remove illiteracy and provide free and compulsory secondary education within minimum possible period;

Again, by not setting a deadline, continued neglect was ensured. Furthermore, as Dr. Isani reminds us, Principles of Policy are “non-justicable rights, whereas Fundamental Rights are justicable rights and can be enforced through a court of law”.

If the legislation the President has talked about is indeed enacted and access to free primary education is recognized as a Fundamental Right (under Chapter 1 of the Constitution), it will oblige the state to act urgently and decisively.

It has been over 60 years that The Universal Declaration of Human Rights unambiguously stated (Article 26 (1)):

Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.

It’s about time that the Constitution of Pakistan also takes the next step. After all, Pakistan was one of the 48 countries that voted in favor of this resolution on December 10, 1948.

The more detailed opinion article in the current issue of Nature is co-authored by a distinguished team, including the lead author Athar Osama, a science and innovation policy researcher, former minister of education, science and technology Shams Kassim-Lakha, the director of Boston University’s Pardee Center, Adil Najam, Christopher King of ScienceWatch.com and Syed Zulfiqar Gilani of the Institute of Education and Research, University of Peshawar and a board member of Seneca College.

The article, titled “Pakistan’s Reform Experiment“, overall takes a positive view of HEC’s reforms, stating that “the HEC seems to have changed the culture of Pakistani academia considerably over the past 5 years”. Using data from Thompson Reuters, the authors show that the impact of papers from Pakistan, relative to the average of the field, has improved significantly in Mathematics and Engineering over the last five years. In fact, papers from Pakistan in Mathematics have 20% higher impact factor than the world average! In comparison, papers in  fields other than engineering and mathematics have not seen a significant improvement in the relative impact, which may be consistent with more HEC money targeted at technical disciplines.

At the same time, the article points out some potential pitfalls that the HEC needs to avoid. HEC cannot be the “initiator, implementer and evaluator” at the same time. Accountability of HEC initiatives by academics is necessary. The pace of reform has led to resistance by the universities, (a fact acknowledged by HEC Executive Director in our earlier interview), and HEC has not been fully successful in winning over that resistance. The attempt to produce too many PhDs in local universities may have compromised the quality of the PhD degree significantly. And leaving behind certain disciplines in the favor of others, especially critically important areas such as the social sciences, has not been the most prudent of policies.

We feel that the article is a well-balanced analysis of HEC’s performance. There is no doubt that the landscape of higher education has changed for the better, in a very short amount of time. However, it is also clear that higher education reform is a long term agenda. What is important is not how many grants are funded, but whether scholarship is thriving in the country or not. The conclusion of the article aptly makes this point:

The HEC has, over the past few years, made considerable progress. Its success, however, must not be measured by the number of grants made or PhDs awarded. Rather it should be judged on whether it is creating a culture of research — one driven not by financial incentives, but by a genuine desire to create new knowledge and to enable the broader society to reap the benefits. While that remains to be seen, Pakistan’s experience has useful lessons for other countries.

The article comes at an appropriate time, as the new Chairman of HEC, Dr Javaid Laghari takes over (see our posts here, and here). It provides an objective analysis to the new chairman, as he will take on the review of the previous policies and initiatives.

Coming up soon: We, at STEP, contacted the lead author of the study, Dr Athar Osama. Coming soon are his replies on what led to this study, what data sources and methodologies were used and what was the most surprising finding of this study.

Photocredit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leena/2488225767/

Dr. Javaid Laghari appearing on Breakfast at Dawn today

Dr. Laghari also stated that human resource development will continue to remain a high priority for the HEC and the 2500 PhD scholars on foreign scholarships and 3500 scholars working towards their PhD in Pakistan need not worry about their scholarships being discontinued.

In responding to STEP’s question (communicated to the host via Twitter), Dr. Laghari stated that good policies of the past chairman will be continued, and the effort will be on improving whatever has been achieved in the past. In response to another question from STEP, Dr. Laghari said that rumors of the merging of HEC and the Ministry of Education are not true. Both have a role to play and they should work together for improving education in the country.

Overall, we at STEP are optimistic about the prospects of his appointment for higher education in the country, based on his responses. Oftentimes, there is a tendency on the part of a successor to undo all that has been achieved by previous administrators. Dr. Laghari was generous in giving credit to Dr. Ata ur Rehman but also pointed out some not-so-successful initiatives like the projects to build many universities with foreign collaborations. He implied that his role at HEC will be to build upon and improve what has been achieved in the past.

Before joining SZABIST, Dr. Laghari was a tenured professor at the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo, where he spent almost 15 years as a faculty member. He holds a PhD Degree in Electrical Engineering from SUNY, Buffalo (1980), MS from METU, Ankara (1975), and BS from University of Sindh, Jamshoro (1971). Dr Laghari is an accomplished researcher in the areas of high voltage systems and space power technologies. According to his resume available online, he has published 41 journal papers, including papers in IEEE Transactions on Electrical Insulation, Applied Physics Communications, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, Journal of Materials Science Letters and IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. Many of his papers can be accessed from IEEExplore (login required) and Google Scholar.

Dr Laghari supervised six PhD students to completion at SUNY, Buffalo. He received more than $5 million in sponsored research grants during his tenure at SUNY and established the Space Power Institute there. He also held the position of Director of Graduate Studies at SUNY, Buffalo for the last few years of his stay there.

About his interest in issues of education, Dr Laghari’s website states the following:

Dr. Laghari is an academic at heart. He is concerned about the state of education, both in schools and universities, in Pakistan.

He is actively involved in the educational affairs of the country. He has raised many concerns on the Senate floor and has recommended an increase in the lower education budget so that the literacy rate of Pakistan can be substantially increased.

Dr Laghari believes in liberal education and supports the secularization of the syllabus. He is a strong proponent of education for girls and women, particulary from the underdeveloped areas.

Dr Laghari(’s) goal is that Pakistani universities join the ranks of leading universities in Asia. He has already achieved this goal by making SZABIST among the top universities in Asia as ranked by BusinessWeek, AsiaInc, Time and CNN.

As a member of Senate, Dr Laghari served on three standing committees including the Standing Committee on Water and Power. He has severely criticized Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) and Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation (KESC) for their performance and advocated for the adoption of conservation measures as the solution to the looming power crisis in 2007. In an earlier article published in 2006 titled “Power Vision for Pakistan“, he suggested the use of nuclear and coal power plants, arguing that Pakistan is well-positioned in both areas in terms of technical expertise and resources, yet not utilizing that potential for power generation. He also advocated exploring wind and solar energy, and argued that because ‘water and power’ are always lumped together in Pakistan, progress towards other sources of power has been minimal.

In the past, Dr Laghari has written on the subject of higher education, including articles about “Promoting Research for Development” (Dawn 1997), “The Role of Private Sector in Higher Education” (The News 1998) and “Vision of Professional Education in the 21st Century” (The News 1997). As the Chairman of HEC, he will have ample opportunity to put these ideas to practice. We wish him all the best in this new role, and hope for rapid progress in higher education in the country.

The review of the current education policy was started in 2005, well before the expiry date of the previous education policy. This is explained, rightly so, in the introduction of the new policy draft:

Two main reasons prompted the Ministry of Education (MoE) to launch the review in 2005 well before the time horizon of the existing policy framework (1998 – 2010) had approached. Firstly, the policy framework has not served as a satisfactory guide, as the policies pursued under that framework had not produced the desired educational results. Performance of the education sector has been deficient in several key aspects, most notably in access rates, and in quality and equity of educational opportunities.

The white paper also summarizes the gaps in the education sector in this paragraph:

The “education condition” in Pakistan is far from acceptable with deprivation being experienced by  large sub-groups – from children to adults. The existing education system has failed to cater to the needs of the children. Resultantly, a large majority of children stay out of school; another significant  majority goes to school but do not find education productive and therefore drop out. Those who continue school are not being equipped well for “life in the 21st century”. Though policies to promote quality education have been formulated and promulgated from time to time, successive failures of the promises and the practice of missing the well marked goal posts have created a credibility gap.

As Dawn points out, the delay is unexplained and perhaps hints at political considerations taking over:

After extensive consultations, in 2007 a white paper was produced, offering a sensible approach. But for unknown reasons the government has been dillydallying on the matter. Last year, a Canadian expert was called in and another draft was prepared in 2009. Even that was shelved in April when it was placed before the federal cabinet which felt it was not good enough and needed more input from the provinces. Nothing has been heard of it since then.

Going through the policy draft and the white paper, one can well understand that a lot of good work has gone into both the documents. The preparation of the white paper presented a new consultative approach by the Ministry of Education,  by incorporating extensive input from educational policy experts and other stake holders (see Annexure 1 of the white paper). Initially, a review of all previous education policies and reports was undertaken. Next, 23 different ‘Green Papers’ were written on issues related to education in Pakistan. These were subsequently shared with key stakeholders for feedback. The Ministry also undertook three research studies, on review of previous policies, a study of the legal framework for education, and a study on how far the tangible targets of the previous education policy have been met. A number of consultations were held after this, including issue roundtables and education conferences in each province. Focused consultations with key organizations, such as IED-Agha Khan University, HEC and National Reconstruction Bureau were also held. Feedback from these discussions was then incorporated into six thematic papers. All of this input was summarized into a white paper, published in Dec 2006 and subsequently revised in February 2007.

Is the delay deliberate and politically motivated, or does the government have genuine concerns regarding the policy?