The list includes harmless words such as ‘Jesus Christ’ besides the words generally considered inappropriate by the society. Imagine if ‘Muhammad’ was to be included in the list of banned words by a western country?

Telecom providers are carriers of information or bits, similar to a postal carrier. When one sends a letter using a postal carrier such as Pakistan Post, one is free to choose any words to express. Pakistan Post does not place any restriction on the contents of the letter.

There are legitimate concerns of spam text messages and sending inappropriate text messages to children. However, the former problem can potentially be solved using a ‘Do not receive message from a number not in contact’ mechanism. The later problem can be addressed by limiting the use of text messages for under age children when purchasing the phone plan.

The most worrisome aspect of this ban a small number of people at PTA determine the list of inappropriate words and can arbitrary expand this list.

PTAs concerns about the use of inappropriate words are understandable. However, it is worth considering whether these concerns should be addressed via top down ban of words in SMS, or by educating and raising awareness among youth through educational campaigns in partnership with schools, colleges, and universities.

We invite our readers to discuss whether such a ban should be instituted by PTA.

The regulation came into effect on July 10, 2010 and overrides an earlier regulation promulgated on November 13, 2008, titled “Monitoring and Reconciliation of International Traffic Regulations, 2008″. Our reading of the 2010 regulations indicate that they allow the Pakistani Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to monitor and block any traffic (encrypted or not), including voice and data, originating or terminating in Pakistan. Further, through these regulations, PTA is banning the use of encryption for signaling information. In case, the user of a telephony or data provider needs to encrypt its signaling information, it must obtain explicit permission from PTA. Below, we quote verbatim from page 549 of the Gazette of Pakistan, that describes this regulation:

“(6) The Licensee(s) and Access Provider shall ensure that signaling information is uncompressed, unencrypted, and not formatted in a manner which the installed monitoring system is unable to decipher using installed capabilities.

(7) In case it is not possible to monitor the signaling information of some traffic at the Probe and the Authority has agreed to let the traffic pass through, the required signaling information shall be extended from the Licensee(s) and Access Provider(s) network’s premises, at their own cost, including but not limited to the required format conversions, hauling of data to the Authority designated location, and installation of additional equipment to achieve information as specified in sub regulation (6) above.”

So what is signaling information? A signaling information identifies who is calling or exchanging data with whom. For example, if a user A of cell phone provider 1 calls user B of cell phone provider 2, a CDR (call data record) is created in the database records of both providers. Similar records can be created for data (IP) traffic. The promulgated regulation practically bans the use of encrypted virtual private networks (EVPNs) by IT businesses unless an explicit permission is maintained by PTA. In simple terms, any IT business in Pakistan which wants to use EVPNs must obtain an explicit permission from PTA. According to a PTA memo date July 21, 2011 posted on this blog, PTA is enforcing this regulation by sending warnings to ISPs. However, does PTA have the man power to vet the legality of every EVPN?

Are there any other software besides EVPNs that encrypt signaling information? The answer is clearly yes. Skype is an example of a popular software which encrypts its signaling information for establishing a voice or video call. If PTA’s regulation were to be strictly enforced, it will ban the use of Skype in Pakistan.

Besides restricting signaling information from being encrypted, the regulation forces the providers of voice and data traffic to procure, establish, deploy, and maintain equipment for a monitoring system at their own costs. Below is the excerpt from the regulation:

1. Capability to monitor, control, measure, and record traffic in real-time
2. Capability for complete signaling record, including but not limited for billing
3. Capability to accurately measure the quality of service
4. A complete list of Pakistani customers and their details
5. Complete details of capacity leased by the licensee(s) to their customers
6. No person, except the authority shall be allowed to monitor, reconcile or block any traffic directly or indirectly on their own network or that of the other network in the manner prescribed in these regulations, without prior written approval of the Authority.

We note that (1) and (2) are not necessarily specific to Pakistan. Many  countries have regulations in place which allow the competent authority to monitor the signaling record or intercept traffic. However, such snooping of traffic is usually accompanied by a court order. Therefore, the most worrisome part from the perspective of a Pakistani citizen is (6) which gives PTA the authority to monitor and block traffic. It is not clear whether PTA needs a court order to exercise this authority.

Has your online business being impacted by this law in any way? We invite you to post your experiences as comments.

According to the news reports published in The News and Dawn, the Implementation Commission of the 18th Amendment has decided to devolve Higher Education Commission to the provinces. From the details that have emerged so far, it appears that either HEC is being completely devolved to the provinces, or many of its powers will be transferred to the provinces. While the details of this plan are being worked out, we invite our readers to comment on the pros and cons of a complete or substantial devolution of HEC to provinces.

The justification being provided for the move is that the 18th constitutional amendment abolished the Concurrent List that allowed the Federal government to legislate on issues like “[c]urriculum, syllabus, planning, policy, centers of excellence, and standards of education” and “Islamic Education”. However the 18th constitutional amendment, while abolishing the Concurrent List has added a few entries to the Federal List that essentially account for HEC’s charter covered in the Higher Education Commission Ordinance 2002 that established the institution. The Federal List now includes,

• “Standards in institutions for higher education and research, scientific and technical institutions”.
• “National planning and national economic coordination including planning and coordination of scientific and technological research”.

These entries in the federal list indicate that the authors of the 18th amendment understood that there is a need to coordinate research and standards of higher education at a national level and there is a corresponding role for federal regulatory bodies like HEC in this space.

STEP believes that HEC has been able to bring about a sea change in the higher education landscape in Pakistan. While HEC has faced due criticism for its at times overly ambitious plans, such as the one to create new public sector universities, it has, to a large extent, promoted a research culture in Pakistani universities which was almost non-existent. Further, its programs on standardizing curricula and testing, combating rampant plagiarism through strict policies and monitoring, sending students to pursue their PhD from top-tier world universities, and connecting Pakistani universities to researchers all over the world through video conferencing have been quite successful.

Most important though is the institutional foundation that HEC provides. In a country with crumbling and crumbled institutions, and ineffective bureaucracy, HEC has certainly been one of the most responsive organizations. Throughout its existence, HEC has appeared willing to engage in a healthy debate about it proper role, the limits of its power and the efficacy of its policies with the all the stakes holders, including the students. In many ways, the open criticism of HEC in the op-ed columns and websites like ours is a reflection of both its impact and its openness. The role it has played in the politically-charged degree verification process points to its strength as an institution.

To conclude, Pakistan has a myriad of problems and millions of young Pakistanis with no access to quality higher education is high among them. There is no shortage of battles to be fought in finding the best way forward, and devolving the institution that has been leading the charge is certainly not the way to go. Instead, the focus of our efforts should be on building additional capabilities, at the federal, provincial, and district levels, and ensuring that HEC does the best possible job in coordinating these efforts as well as providing the institutional memory that is desperately required.

“If people in universities, who have the rare ability to convert research into products are not rewarded, and their careers are stifled, they will leave the country and go to the developed world where such abilities are very highly valued and rewarded. As a matter of fact this has already been happening for a number of years, and the country has suffered badly because of it.”

In our view, professors or students who have the ability to convert research into products are rarely, if ever, rewarded by universities anywhere in the world. Rather, it is the marketplace that rewards them: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were college drop-outs who did not make their mark in the cocoon of a university fellowship program. Rather their ideas and innovation took off in the competitive environment of the open market.

Thus, while we agree that entrepreneurial individuals are sorely needed in the country to transfer the benefits of research and intellectual output at universities, we contend that it is not the mandate of the Higher Education to focus on incentivizing them directly.

HEC is not the panacea. It is one government agency, with limited clout and a shrinking budget. HEC’s focus must remain on allowing our universities to hire and retain the best and brightest researchers and educators that are available, and giving them the opportunity to reach their full potential. That in itself is a formidable task, and executing it well requires making difficult choices. HEC does need to “return to Pakistan” and focus on areas of research and inquiry that are more suitable for Pakistani researchers given our limited resources and our unique developmental needs. To this end, HEC can nudge researchers into areas that are most relevant to Pakistani context.

Government agencies and organizations, like the Ministry of Science and Technology and Pakistan Software Export Board, as well as public-private R&D funds, like the National ICT R&D Fund, need to play the leading role in commercializing research coming out of the universities. Organizations like the National ICT R&D Fund not only have the necessary funding base but their very structure as a public-private partnership makes them ideally suited to carry out this risky but essential purpose.

HoD Ahmad rightly points out that we need a sustained effort to invigorate the industrial base and subsequently create employment. Yet, it’s not the job of university professors; it will be an error to evaluate their worth from a task that is not theirs. Instead, alternative avenues should be provided to support people who have the “rare ability to convert research into products” to thrive and to do what they do best, while not distracting HEC from it core and vital purpose.

When did your involvement with GIK Institute start? What was the vision for GIKI and, after 17 years, is GIKI where you envisioned it to be?

I was among the people, including several foreign professors, invited by then-President Ghulam Ishaq Khan — around 1989-90 — for  brainstorming sessions about the proposed Institute. The idea of starting a private university in science and engineering was quite novel [at the time] for Pakistan, and it was meant to be an instrument for breaking out of the mediocrity trap gripping Pakistan’s other engineering Universities.

My dream was for GIKI to become a community of self-governing scholars, a place where reason and innovation would rule and where the only thing that matters – the quality of student emerging from it – would be at the center of all our efforts.  These graduates would also be proficient in their work and aware of their own cultural heritage as well as those of other people, and  imbued with the processes of (mathematical) reasoning. This dream is yet incomplete as it requires civilizing the engineers and scientists also!

What are the obstacles to achieving this vision?

The reasons go back to the founding of the Institute. [At the time of its founding] I disagreed with Topi as the site, and preferred an urban setting near Nowshera, on the main highway and close to a strong industrial cluster, since it was going to be set up in the then-NWFP (now re-named as Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa). President Ghulam Ishaq Khan may have been persuaded by his close associations with WAPDA to set it up next to Tarbela Dam, but this decision has been the fatal flaw holding back GIKI from reaching its true potential. It hardly mattered in the years before HEC started injecting funds into the higher education sector but now it is critical, as GIKI has little access to public funds. My fear is that GIKI will price itself out of the market.

My other recommendation was also not followed in letter and spirit. I had done my undergraduate from Oxford (its engineering department was called the Engineering Sciences Dept .), and remembered it as a program which enabled one to go into manufacturing, or research, or business [after graduation]. It stressed the blurring of boundaries between engineering and physical sciences. GIKI’s name does have the words “Engineering Sciences” in it, and there is a faculty of Engineering Sciences, but it is not really in the same spirit of the 100-year old model at Oxford, where every student had to take all subjects (electronics and electrical engineering, computers, heat engines and thermodynamics, mechanical and other civil structures, fluid flows), and then take 3-4 additional advanced courses [in the area of his or her specialization].

When were you brought on-board as the Rector, and when and why did you leave?

I was asked and agreed to become the Rector in June 2008 to but left in January 2009 for one major reason. The Taliban fell in love with me and accused me in a letter in November 2008 of spreading immorality and organizing mehfils of ‘raqs-o-saroor‘, apart from espousing the ideas of the Americans and the Jews, etc., etc. Also, I am quite an independent person, one who has made his own decisions, and it riled me that their shoora had decided to ‘send me to jahannum’ without asking me first!

My focus was always the well-being of the students and to see that they got their money’s worth. I interacted with faculty and students intensively to improve the delivery of education. I also pulled up the administration for their general apathy. I insisted on hygiene and cleanliness in the hostels and dining halls, started improving their sports facilities, and offered to arrange proper music lessons. I encouraged them to patronize local Swabi talent rather relying on relatively expensive pop concerts. I also asked them to be irreverent — to avoid obscurantist dogmas by questioning assumptions, and to remember that no mullah is remembered in Muslim history, while scholars such as Ibn Khaldun and Bu Ali Sina are honoured.  Imagine my frustration at not being able to have even a discussion with the Taliban!

The students were my first concern and without raising alarms, I brought this [letter from the Taliban's shoora] to the notice of the Federal Interior Ministry, which helped to increase police patrolling on the two major roads to Islamabad and Peshawar to prevent any harm to the students. My family came to know only in Jan 2009 and were quite hysterical. So, I decided to quit. Remember, Swat was only an hour away and the military operation against the Taliban did not start for another 10 weeks. There was also the strange case related to the revival of the hair cutting saloon on the campus for female students and faculty wives. This was opposed by a couple of senior (!) faculty wives as being un-Islamic. Incidentally this facility is doing very well.

But, you’re still associated with the Institute (as the Executive Director of SOPREST). What are you working on now?

After the sad demise of Mr. H.U. Baig, I was asked in March 2010 to take over as Executive Director of SOPREST, the society which runs GIKI. I have done so on the understanding that we will be working towards setting up three new Schools of Business, Public Policy, and the Social Sciences in Islamabad under the SOPREST banner.  I am happy to report that the BoG of SOPREST approved this program on its meeting of 17th September.

This new campus is expected to have some 2500 students in place in 10 years. It will provide an integrated approach to business, management, public policy, and simulations and modeling of issues pertaining to problems peculiar to this century, such as security and affordability of energy, water and food. We have requested 50 acres from CDA near Rawal Dam, while a partnership is possible with another Foundation on a 300 acre site near DHA/Bahria.

The support of GIKI alumni will be extremely critical in making this a success. Our alumni  have made a name for themselves, in Pakistan and abroad, and I request them all to support us with suggestions and networking for acquiring talented faculty and, of course, donations. Their advice and experience will be extremely valuable for making GIKI a true University. Our target is to raise some 50 % of the Rs 1.2 billion we will be spending on the venture in the next 5 years. We intend to manage the remainder amount.

A final question about GIKI. Your son was a student at GIKI back in the 90s. If you had the option of sending your son to GIKI now, would you still send him there or to another institute?

[Laughter]. I will probably send him [to GIKI]. It is still one of the best places for engineering in Pakistan.

Moving away from GIKI/SOPREST… You did some pioneering work on lasers in Pakistan, work that can be an example for scientists returning to Pakistan. How did it all start, what did you accomplish and do you see a bright future for the work you started?

It was really exciting! I started as a one-man laser group in 1969 but gradually we developed a very good team. We all complemented one another and we all gave generously of our time.

We built lasers, we used them, and we generated over five billion rupees of revenue through product development over 20 years. Our lasers are leveling farm land in Pakistan and reducing water consumption by more than a third.  I met the Director of the Biotech Institute in South India recently, and was pleased to know that 3 of our land levelers were purchased by them for reverse engineering. Recently, I helped design the position monitoring system for the thousands of detectors in the CMS at CERN in Geneva. All 40 systems have been made in my labs and have been incorporated at CERN’s CMS, and our lasers and precision optics have been used in Germany, Switzerland, and Spain apart from S.E. Asia.

I lapsed from active science in 2005 when I joined the Planning Commission but I’ve been back to my lab about 4 to 5 times, though we stay in touch. Lasers has a good future in Pakistan, and is in good hands.  The National Laser Labs is now being put together, and will commence shortly. I am content that there may now be more people working in lasers in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission than in nuclear physics!

You’ve had a remarkable career in academia, in research labs and in the government as member of the Planning Commission. What do you consider to be your most significant accomplishment? How would you like to be remembered ?

An embarrassing question! I think my legacy would be the starting of a completely new field in Pakistan: Lasers.

Spoken like a true scientist! One final question. Did your work in the government make you more hopeful about Pakistan’s future or less?

Planning Commission was an enormous learning experience for me. I initially looked after science and technology, higher education and industry (a good combination) and later education and health also. This was my first experience of working in the ‘Government’ and I was a bit surprised at the lack of institutional memory and just downright laziness and incompetence. I hope I raised the quality of discourse and analysis.

My biggest challenge [at the Commission] was the Vision 2030 project – trying to identify the most likely future for Pakistan among the many that were possible or desirable. This document is now largely forgotten in the middle of the political changes of the last two years, but going through this exercise really gave me a lot of hope about the future of Pakistan.

I am confident about the role for Pakistan in this century. We are not too small as to be irrelevant, in fact we are the about right population size and our younger people carry far less historical baggage; they are enterprising, more selective and also more demanding in terms of quality.

On that optimistic note, thank you very much, Dr. Khan and our best wishes.

Thank you.

Let’s start by talking about the recent funding crisis at the HEC and the universities. Do the universities have a point that current funding is simply inadequate? Is there a way out?

The Universities are quite vulnerable as regards their development budgets, which are frozen except for the projects nearing completion. I believe considerable funds have been released for their operational expenditures and the critical moment is over.

I must point out that while the HEC has done excellent work by focusing on developing the physical and intellectual infrastructure and hence access to higher education, this growth cannot continue at such a high rate indefinitely. The Universities have been conditioned by HEC to expect funding increases every year, with few serious reviews in place. In fact, (until recently) HEC was expecting 20-26 % increase in funds annually for the foreseeable future, which was simply not sustainable.

The recent funding crisis was foreseen earlier, and the HEC was cautioned as far back in 2007 by the Planning Commission – where I looked after Higher Education – to pause and consolidate, to slow down expansion, and concentrate on quality matters, which is perhaps more important than mere numbers. After all the only deliverable from a University is its graduates and their competence and ability in meeting the demands of the very competitive 21st century. This does not mean, as some have suggested recently, that the HEC and Universities should not have received large funding at all. However, this crisis has thrown up the opportunity for a major review of the HEC itself, and address the issues of its organizational efficiency, and decision framework. Of particular importance are activities related to funding for research, accreditation, and rankings which needs to be reviewed for potential conflict of interest. This is extremely urgent under the new devolution regime.

Please remember that Pakistan is not unique in facing this problem. Higher education and its funding is in crisis everywhere. This is why Western Universities solicit students from countries such as Pakistan so that they can continue to subsidize their own students one way or the other. Coming now to the present, even without a financial crisis as at present, this tapering off of funds would have happened, but it should have been gentler and more gradual. With the economy being badly hit by several factors such as the global crisis in financial sector, inflation in fuel and food prices, war in Afghanistan next door, and now the floods; all have heightened the fragility of governance and macroeconomic instability.

The current stress on the Universities is expected to continue.

What is the way out?

First, reduce costs, and mobilize other resources simultaneously, with a moratorium on new development projects for at least 3-4 years. The word should be: Consolidate. There is just not enough faculty to allow further expansion, and the result of this shortage is that we have a ‘teach – hop – teach’ syndrome exploited by roaming ‘visiting faculty’. While a few thousand PhDs will no doubt be joining Pakistani universities in the near future, I do not buy into the argument that a freshly returned PhD , no matter how talented, must also be a good teacher.

Ultimately it comes down finally to increasing internal efficiencies. Increase the student: teacher ratios to 25 instead of 18 to one, and reduce the very high ratio of non-teaching staff to total staff in Universities. This hasn’t changed much over the years and need to come down to 1:1 from the current 3:1 Perhaps more mergers may be the answer, as there are too many small, non-critical, and hence inefficient institutions operating in Pakistan. Hardly any University has enrollment on its own campus(es) of 15,000 to 25,000 students. I ignore affiliated colleges, which offer two year degrees.

Given the funding shortfall we’re likely to face even in the future, isn’t increasing the tuition fee a prudent option? Shouldn’t public universities be responsible for generating at least some significant portion of their operating expenditure?

Public universities certainly need to generate more funds themselves, and should also be more prudent in expenditures, because the desired funds will just not be available. Let me give you an idea of the expected shortfall. According to the HEC’s  Medium Term  Development Framework (MTDF 2005-2015) the projected expenditures are  Rs 1150 billion over this period.  The resultant shortfall would be nearly Rs 600 billion unless  additional resources are harnessed, as pointed out by the World Bank in late 2006. Such expenditures are neither feasible nor justified given the national  tax : GDP ratio  of only about 10%. The matter is made worse by the increasing burden of pensions and major increase in emoluments of all employees.

What are the possible solutions?

First, the HEC must slow down the pace of development and expansion, and should stop any new programmes for 4-5 years.

Second, there is no choice but to increase tuition fees, which is admittedly likely to result in higher unit costs / student apart from slowing the growth in enrolment and increasing the inequities already existing in the country’s education structure. On the other hand, it is argued that Higher Education provides an economic advantage to those who get it, and no fees (or low fees) gives an unfair economic facility to those who can afford to pay.

This is not easy to implement, as it is linked with the sensitive question about how much cost recovery is reasonable. All public universities should be encouraged to progressively generate at least 50% of their operational expenses within five years, coupled with rigorous means testing for financial assistance in order to preserve some equity. The concept of interest-free student loans from an expanded Student Fund needs to be visited, with the loans being paid back after obtaining jobs.

Thirdly, we need to recall our traditional concept of waqf through land being attached to universities for their upkeep. All our major mosques and madrassa have such endowments. Oxford and Cambridge are the biggest landlords in the UK while land-grant universities in the USA have also been quite successful. Some Pakistani universities have plenty of spare land even after decades of existence, and can use some of it to generate some revenues. Vertical physical growth will also be more efficient in space utilization. This also means raising and managing endowment funds from alumni and businessmen.

Fourthly, HEC needs to improve its own internal efficiencies as well as of universities (student teacher ratios, faculty: non-faculty numbers, better trained and educated administrative personnel). While the operational costs of HEC are of the order of 3% of its operational funding of universities, it is too high when the sheer disparity in its personnel numbers versus all the universities is taken into account.

Fifth, the HEC needs to revisit all the incentives it offered to university faculty for doing research and supervising PhD students. This may no longer be valid now with much enhanced faculty salaries, and will reduce the operating costs considerably.

Sixth, the student numbers being sent abroad for MS or PhD need to be reduced in the proportion of the returning PhD scholars from abroad, as more and more PhD work should be done progressively within the country.

All these measures have to be applied simultaneously.

What do you make of the role that the private sector is playing in higher education in Pakistan? Current and likely future funding shortfalls for public sector universities will likely increase the role that private universities are playing? How can that be managed better?

The private sector is already very active in higher education, with some 35 % of enrollment, and 60 private universities as against 75 public institutions. It can make even greater contribution by reducing the burden on the public exchequer, specially in the present crisis, where its role can be more efficient in providing access to higher education. Even though private Institutions are generally smaller, and more expensive, their graduates such as from GIKI and LUMS  are well regarded by academia, business and industry.

It would be necessary to provide the private sector a more level playing field by making them eligible for state R& D funds, which should be neutral and depend only on the quality of proposal. At the same time, they will need they need to submit to greater regulation, scrutiny,  and transparency in quality and financial matters, in regard to full-time faculty and the exemption from income tax.

In our interview with Dr. Asad Abidi, he talked about the importance of vocational training and how most of the industrial economies were built on vocational training. Why hasn’t that happened in Pakistan? And, would establishing vocational training institutions not have been a better investment of public funds than sending students for PhDs, funding research at local universities,  and other programs that HEC started ?

I agree entirely with Dr Asad Abidi.  We cannot increase our economic envelope without raising our collective competence, which alone will ensure our breaking out of the low skills, low productivity, low expectations trap. Just 1% of our 12-17 age group are enrolled in some skill-development programme as compared with, say, Turkey which enrolls nearly 21% of this age cohort.  Why is this so? It is not glamorous enough. We have more doctors than nurses and more engineers than technicians. However, it is not an either-or situation.

We have to improve the quality of students entering University; even more important we need to make secondary education economically relevant, which requires rapid increase in funding for schools and colleges.

We now need to move beyond merely higher education and focus on schools and colleges, specially the neglected transition link between school education and economically relevant skills. After all the knowledge worker in the 21st Century is as much the switchboard operator, or the admissions clerk in a college or the person behind the sales counter or the fisherman and farm worker, as is a PhD.

I feel that the vocationalisation of secondary education (class 8-10) with one or more vocational tracks offered to complement traditional schooling will help reduce school dropouts and improve productivity. It will also make our young people more employable, and keep them away from social distress and mischief. When I left GIKI as Rector, I went back briefly to the Planning Commission and managed to produce a policy paper on expanding quality and relevance of vocational/technical education. This has been accepted by the CDWP and also recently accepted by USAID one of three major reforms needed in Pakistan’s education sector.

Do remember that university and vocational training are not an either-or choice. Both are essential, and with universities now approaching a certain threshold, it is possible to shift the focus to the neglected technical training sector.

I estimate that it will cost a fifth per student per year for a technical diploma /certificate as compared with a university undergraduate degree, with earlier economic returns.

In Part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Shaukhat Hameed Khan we talk about GIKI and Dr. Khan’s experience working as the Rector of GIKI.

However, there is a third set of opinions about the Fund that also must be taken into account. For some of us, National ICT R&D Fund’s performance leaves much to be desired, though, it does not in any way lead to the conclusion that the fund must be dissolved or become irrelevant. In fact, it leads to quite the opposite conclusion, namely, that the Fund must be redesigned and reformed to ensure that it is able to deliver on its promise. That in its current form (and with its current focus) it is not designed to deliver the kind of innovation that the society expects from it and may in fact be duplicating the work of other agencies, such as the Higher Education Commission (HEC).

Failure to Deliver

When it began (initially as PTCL R&D Fund), the National ICT R&D Fund was a beacon of hope for those who wanted the ICT industry to flourish within the country. The unique and innovative mechanism through which the Fund was created and funded held endless possibilities for the future.  I, like so many others, also thought that National ICT R&D Fund’s example could be replicated elsewhere, to provide much needed and critical resources for research and innovation across a whole range of sectors such as health and pharmaceutical, engineering, textile, and automotive, etc. – not just in ICT.

Unfortunately, though, instead of becoming a shining beacon that could inspire such initiatives in other industry sectors, the Fund has so far failed to deliver on its promise. Even though hundreds of millions have been invested over the years in a number research projects, the performance of these projects, particularly in terms of their commercial impact, leaves much to be desired. What has led to this lackluster performance?

For those who have been close to the Fund and have interacted with it, it is quite common knowledge that the Fund wasn’t really designed to deliver what it sought to do. More importantly, it wasn’t even clear to those who have closely watched the Fund what it really sought to do. And whether whatever it wanted to do was possible in the first place. The Fund’s last CEO made it amply clear that it took him a long time to establish processes and procedures to carry out peer review of the proposals that were being submitted to the Fund. Even then, the industry grapevine is full of stories that it took a long time to get a proposal through the Fund’s system of evaluation that was decidedly far from perfect in the first place. It is also known that the Fund, right from its birth, was hardwired and burdened by cumbersome bureaucracy that made sure that anything innovative will probably not go through.

Ingredients for Success

To my mind, the ICT R&D Fund needed (and will still needs) four critical ingredients to become successful. If any one of these ingredients is missing, it will fail to deliver on its objectives. These ingredients are, in order: i) a clearly defined set of objectives, and a structure that is geared towards achieving these objectives; ii) a realistic strategy for achieving its objectives (including an in-depth technical understanding of each problem-set that it seeks to target and technical challenges inherent within those) and a program of activities aimed at tackling these challenges; iii) a capable leader at the helm who has experience of delivering similar programs; iv) systems and processes in place (and flexibility, where needed) to allow the fund to achieve its objectives instead of getting bogged down in never ending bureaucracy.

Going through this list, it becomes quite evident why and how these ingredients are so critically interlinked, in that the failure to provide one will render the others in-effective. For example, if the Fund was not designed right, it would hardly matter how capable a leader it has at its helm. Worse still, an ill-deigned Fund that doesn’t know what it wants to achieve is not likely to attract a capable person in the first place. Similarly, even the most capable of the leaders is likely to fail without appropriate processes and systems (and flexibility) to support him or her. The singular factor responsible for the Fund’s lackluster performance is the lack of understanding of this cause-and-effect logic.

I believe that the National ICT R&D Fund should focus on near-market opportunities that find commercial applications in short-to-medium term (1-3 years). This would require funding ideas that target a clear market opportunity and keeping the recipients of the Fund’s support responsible for delivering a commercialized product. This would ensure that the Fund will not just duplicate the work of the HEC but would add additional value within the innovation continuum. It would also force the universities and the industry to work together in a manner that would lead to commercialization of research.

Redesigning the Fund

The upcoming change in the leadership at the National ICT R&D Fund provides an excellent opportunity to assess the performance of the Fund so far, and, more importantly, to develop a coherent set of objectives, strategies, roadmaps, and systems to empower it to deliver on national objectives in the future. This will require, perhaps, going back to the drawing board. This, I believe, is necessary and the appointment of new leadership without addressing the critical weaknesses in the objectives, strategy, and structure of the Fund would mean another 3 years of wasted energies.

Redesigning the Fund to deliver on its promise will require 4 distinct elements described below:

• Step 1: The most critical ingredient for designing a successful Fund is a policy framework and strategic direction that is carefully thought-through and developed and that aligns it with the national goals and objectives agreed upon by relevant parties.

The importance of identifying realistic and achievable national goals and laying out an initial policy framework that will allow the National ICT R&D Fund to resolutely move towards those goals cannot be over-emphasized. Before expecting the Fund to achieve some objectives, we need to clearly define what those objectives are. These national level objectives must be clear, concise, measurable, and realistic. One cannot simply expect the Chief Executive of the Fund to dream of what would be in the best interest of the country as he goes along investing money and creating new programs. It is not enough for the Fund to say that it seeks to “promote” an innovation-centric ICT research and development eco-system in Pakistan. The Fund must define in much greater detail what it seeks to do and how what it contributes to that goal. The definition of the strategic direction and policy framework will ultimately define what programs and interventions are needed.

• Step 2: Once the overall objectives of the Fund have been identified, it must carry out an extensive strategic planning and technology road-mapping exercise to chart the course for getting there.

A technology road-mapping exercise, if properly carried out, will involve extensive consultations with experts within an industry both inside and outside the country to first identify an (almost) exhaustive list of technical challenges and bottlenecks in achieving the objectives and then laying out alternative approaches that may be followed to address these challenges. For example, if one of the objectives is to develop a smart network management system, the first task is to define what the current level of performance is, what would be the desired level of performance from this system, what are all of the technical bottlenecks in achieving that performance, and what alternate approaches can be used to address those challenges. Once a list of all possible alternative approaches is developed, one is in a better position to match ones resources and capabilities with how the objective might be achieved. This exercise must be carried out in consultation with stakeholders (IT and Telecom Companies and Universities etc.) within the country so as to identify approaches that are realistic and achievable and in line with current capabilities. The existence of such a roadmap will help the leadership of National ICT R&D Fund to develop and fine-tune precise programs or priorities aimed at solving a pre-defined set of technical challenges that may lead to new products and services in the market.

• Step 3: The third key element of a well-designed Fund is the program design that will comprise the “instruments” of policy the Fund will have to achieve its objectives.

Once we know what we want to achieve, and how to get there, the Fund needs a toolkit of policy instruments – i.e. different kinds of funding programs -  that will enable it to achieve its objectives. This programmatic design must be informed by the Fund’s objective and the strategic roadmap. For example, would the Fund require some basic research? Would it need to fund industrial collaborations? Do we need a proof of concept program that will need to be supplemented by development funding later on? Do we need to support entrepreneurship – and how? Could an “Innovation Prize” be used to solve the problem? These are questions that would ultimately define the programs and instruments in the fund’s policy toolkit. In designing new instruments and restructuring older ones, one must also learn from the past by analyzing the current portfolio of the Fund and understand how the Fund’s current toolkit aids or hinders innovation, where the big gaps are, and how might it be strengthened to remove the bottlenecks towards commercialization and commercial impact.

• Step 4: The final element of an effective Fund is an evidence-based performance assessment mechanism that helps the Fund’s management to assess and report on progress and correct course, if necessary.

The final ingredient of a well-designed and effective National ICT R&D Fund must be an evidence-based policy and performance assessment mechanism that continuously assesses, informs, and improves the Fund’s performance. An effective organization must be a learning organization. This is much more true for an R&D Funding Program than for any other type of organization primarily because it must deal with processes (i.e. research, development, and innovation) that are inherently unpredictable and ever-changing. The Fund must also be flexible enough to deal with this unpredictability and adaptive enough to learn and maneuver in the changing techno-economic landscape.  The performance assessment system I am talking about is quite distinct from financial reporting that is already in place at the Fund but instead focuses on developing mechanisms to assess and improve the effectiveness of how the Fund is doing in its ability to achieve its final objectives – not just whether it is spending the money it was supposed to spend. Unfortunately, the latter is often the practice with much of program funding in the government but this may represent a critical gap in designing and managing an innovation funding program.

Taking into account the above 4-step approach, I believe, will significantly improve the focus and performance of the National ICT R&D Fund and empower it to realize its full potential.

I believe, for one, that the basic concept of setting aside a share of revenues to invest in research and innovation is noble, sound and creative way of providing much-needed resources for investing in our long term economic future without burdening the fragile short term public finances of the country. It is my sincere hope that the National ICT R&D Fund could be re-drawn to enable it to deliver on its promise of promoting meaningful goal-driven innovation within the ICT sector and hence become a shining beacon for other sectors to emulate.

Dr. Athar Osama is a science policy consultant and advisor and is the lead author of a paper published in the prestigious journal Nature titled “Pakistan’s Reform Experiment” that analyzed the effectiveness of Pakistan’s investment in the Higher Education. Dr. Osama has been, for over 15 years now, a student and a practitioner of the science and art of science and innovation policy and has been an advisor and consultant to The Royal Society (UK), OIC, PSEB, PASHA, and SciDev.Net. He worked at one of the world’s leading public policy think tank where he was a part of a team that helped restructure the R&D and Engineering infrastructure of a major US public agency, analysed the performance of US Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Programme, and helped form a public sector venture capital fund. Athar is the founder of Muslim-Science.Com. He maybe contacted at athar.osama@gmail.com.

Editor’s Note: In 2009, we conducted an in-depth interview with Dr. Qasim Sheikh, the-then CEO of the National ICT R&D Fund. The interview is available here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

Whenever there is an advertisement for jobs in the scientific discipline in public sector research and development organizations with Special Pay Scales (SPS) for sixteen-year degree holders, one of the requirements is that the educational career of the potential candidate must be 1st Division throughout, with the exception of one second division in any degree excluding the final degree. These job opportunities are open for everyone who has completed at least sixteen years of education, whether they are Bachelors or Masters. Candidates who have completed a sixteen years Bachelors degree have a tangible advantage over candidates who have a sixteen years Masters degree, because for a sixteen year Bachelors graduate there are only three degrees, i.e., SSC (Secondary School Certificate), HSC (Higher Secondary Certificate) and B.Sc. (four-year Bachelors), to satisfy the requirement listed above. For a sixteen-year M.Sc. graduate there are four degrees, i.e., SSC, HSC, B.Sc. (two-years Bachelors) and M.Sc. to satisfy the grading requirements for SPS jobs. The sixteen years M.Sc. graduate has to produce desired results in four degrees, while a sixteen year bachelor has to produce desired result out of only three degrees.

While applying for jobs in the international market, many students in my situation don’t know what to write on their resume — Bachelors or Masters. If I write Masters, the prospective employers expect me to have completed 18 year of education. And, if I write Bachelors, I find myself having a Masters degree in my hand and people wonder why I did not mention the word Master on my resume.

Interestingly, HEC also had this requirement for a certain number of 1st Divisions that I mentioned before, for granting scholarships. One of my friends told me that Dr. Atta Ur Rehman, former HEC Chairman, replies to students’ emails so I wrote to him about this problem. He acknowledged my arguments and appointed Dr. Inayat to resolve this issue. As a result, this requirement was discarded from their scholarship criteria and it was replaced with “1st division in terminating degree with no 3rd division in the entire education career.”

Today, we are using the abbreviations B.S. and B.Sc. to denote the 16-years bachelors and the 14-years bachelor, respectively. Same is true with MS (which holds for 18 years Masters) and M.Sc. (which holds for 16 years Master). This, I would say, is a poor attempt to hide the prevailing state of senselessness. All over the world B.S. and B.Sc. stand for the same degree, as is the case with M.S. and M.Sc.

If we look at the world around us, we can easily see that bachelor-level education is equivalent for all subjects and disciplines. We need to implement the same, i.e., four year bachelors for every subject, in Pakistan. It would make our educational and employment system more harmonized, understandable and practicable. It will also create sensible understanding about our educational system inside and outside the country. We can introduce something like HNC (Higher National Certificate) for people who want to terminate their education at 14 years of education.

Majid-ur-Rehman holds an M.Sc. and B.Sc. both in Physics from Government College of Science, Wahdat Road, Lahore. Majid currently works in a Dubai-based organization as Country Manager – Pakistan.

As part of our efforts to try and develop a “Do-It-Yourself” incubation center in Pakistan, we’ve set up Allied Incorporated as our first pilot project. We began operations on January 1st, 2010 out of Lahore. Allied Inc. (as we call it) is run as a not-for-profit. Our objective is to inspire, train and facilitate entrepreneurs – both inside Pakistan and abroad (when they want development teams in Pakistan).  Through this process, we hope to develop and refine a practical model for encouraging entrepreneurship within organizations, across the industry and in the society at large. In this article, I hope to document and share our model, so the model can be improved and perhaps even replicated in smaller, under-served cities.

We envision a 3-step process for new entrants:

1. Inspire: Inspiration is usually the first step in the transformation into entrepreneurship. It is also the fuel that picks us up on days when things are not going so well. I recall reading the story of Shabeer Bhatia (founder of Hotmail) and how he built a $400M company in less than a year with no prior experience of running a company or even managing a team. This was bigger than the budget of most of the cities in Pakistan and how much good it could do. You don’t need to look too far to see that there is amazing content already available online for this purpose. To name a few examples:

• PASHA is going great work in collaboration with CIO Pakistan to develop a series of interviews with key players in the IT space in Pakistan
• Stanford and MIT have great entrepreneurial content
• Forums like greenwhite.org are cropping up as online communities to discuss startups

2. Educate: Once an individual decides to start a business, he is usually met with the realization that he doesn’t know how to proceed. For young fresh graduates, the gaps are huge. For experienced individuals, gaps lie in the financial management and sales and marketing side. Our training focus thus is:

1. Business Management content with an entrepreneurial focus: This would be content for someone who has several years of technology experience and now wants to move to a technology entrepreneurial role. These include basic finance and sales and marketing skills.
2. Technical training content required for a startup: This would be focused on last mile technology content that a typical university grad can take and be ready to work in the industry

Though there are many other things that one feels are lacking in resources available out there, we need to be careful what to adopt into a self-funded incubation model since each of these areas requires a huge effort in collecting content, refining it, and keeping it up to date. Our plan on the training side is to develop an online collaborative knowledge base for the industry. We have solicited content from companies in the local industry that specialize in a certain field and are in the process of consolidating and publishing that content. You can find an alpha version of the knowledge base here. Once we have enough content collected and organized, the plan is to start the delivery phase where we will start exploring other forms of delivery for this content (e.g. in-person delivery, video link-based off-site delivery for remote locations, etc.)

3. Facilitate:  Once an individual feels they are ready to take the plunge and start a business, we aim to provide additional facilities. We want to provide a physical forum where entrepreneurs can be around others bitten by the same bug. This is perhaps the most natural way to provide both guidance on things they are doing wrong, and validation of things they are doing right. At the moment we have a small rented office space which entrepreneurs can choose to work in and pay by the seat. The incubator take on the administrative hassle (e.g. power backup, internet connectivity…) allowing new companies to focus on what they’re trying to do. You can find a detailed list of services provided on our site.

Canned Business template #1 – IT Consulting

Since most of the founding team of Allied Inc. are IT professionals, our first template for businesses has been centered around the IT industry. This, we feel can fairly easily be extended to the engineering sector in general.  Most of our participants, so far have been 30-somethings that have significant experience in the outsourcing IT industry and are fairly well aware of the risks they are taking. So far, we haven’t been able to attract fresh graduates with mature ideas but that is something we hope will come as we “templatize” our processes further.

The business model is that of a typical offshore IT outsourcing firm. Target markets are the US and the EU. In particular, we focus on the entrepreneurial sector in these markets due to the ease of access to this sector directly from offshore. The fact that the IT offshoring business is considered a well-known, run of the mill activity is good for us since it provides a lower risk trajectory for tentative entrepreneurs and allows us to focus on the incubation more than the consulting.

Compared to a typical consulting firm, ours is different in a few noteworthy ways listed here. Most notable, however, is that we aim to increase the level of ownership in participants. Ownership of tasks, their consequences and thus the individuals destiny in general. Academic research details five factors that influence the perception of ownership in people in an organizational setting (listed in order of importance):

1. Fairness
2. Community
3. Participation
4. Financial Payoff
5. Influence

Within Allied we’ve tried to implement these principles using the following policies:

1. All policy making is based on a shared vision of fairness. We define fair as values of greatest combined mutual interest.
2. All employees have open access to information. This includes details of revenue and expenditure.
3. Consultants get paid what the clients pay for them (minus overheads). Since Allied Inc. aims for no profit, this leads to great value for both the employees and their consultants. Details of this here.
4. All employees are free to experiment in their free time and are open to solicit other companies and customers for business. If they succeed in bringing in business, they are free to setup their own teams or businesses the way they see fit. This is quite unlike conventional IT units in Pakistan where this attitude is actively discouraged.
5. We present no grand plans or strategies for the future. Our growth will come ecologically depending on what the employees of the companies are most excited about. There are no grand plans or long term strategies. We encourage constant experimentation with delivery and sales models, guided by the training options available internally.

[Note: To give credit where it’s due, most of these ideas are derived from Dr. J. s's story of how he started Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). The company was started in 1969 with total revenue of $250,000. By 1990, they had $1B in revenues, which grew to $8B in 2006. Our operating philosophy derives heavily from the guiding principles of SAIC.]

Challenges (so far…)

• Slow decision making: Given the collaborative and democratized nature of our decision making process, it is slow. We need to spend a lot of time developing consensus and doing due diligence on a lot of issues. This is almost always slower than a ‘saith’ making spot decisions and at times speed of making decisions matters more than making the absolute right choice.
• People issues
  • Skepticism: Amazingly, we have had a lot of resistance from people in accepting the idea of a not-for-profit firm. Most of our clients show skepticism on the validity of our claim. More surprisingly perhaps, hiring new talent is even harder. We get the “what are you getting from all this then” question a lot. This is, however, natural since few, if any, references are available for people both here and abroad.
  • Behavioral Inertia: Another related issue is the lack of people who are willing to take responsibility. Most of our hires are senior people with 7 or 8 years of experience in the local services industry. During that time, they have been groomed to take as little ownership as possible, and to participate only when absolutely necessary. They have been convinced that doing better will not necessarily lead to better reward. We’ve found that this re-adjustment process takes a while to sink in for most people.
  • Strange definition of risk: People in Pakistan have a strange definition of risk. I once interviewed a person who told me that ours was a small setup and it was a big risk for him to join us because he wouldn’t know how long we’d last. I offered to give him a few months advance salary and extended notice periods for termination but he wasn’t very interested. I asked him how much guarantee he had from his current employer and if he knew how well that company was doing internally. I asked him if his current employer had a million dollars in reserve but chose to shut the company down anyways, would he have any control over it. He got the point, but he still didn’t join us!
  • Impatience: Being young, full of ideas and having an entrepreneurial flame burning in you is a really bad combination! Many times our level of patience for results is that of a hungry two year old in front of candy. This is, however, a happy problem. We would rather have people too eager for change than those who have given up on it.
• Lack of guidance: One of our major issues is not having a reference business model for incubation and in particular non-profit/cooperative consulting firms. There are few of these out there in the world and even fewer that are openly documented for references. Hence a lot of our learning on incubation is experience-based.
• Making the training unit break-even: One of our key challenges on the training front is monetizing the effort required to build and maintain the training portal initially. Although technology training remains a major hurdle for the growth of the local industry, most companies are not willing to act on it. Our attempts to form an industry-wide fund to develop the training portal have so far met with stalling tactics. This lack of funding has made the training development slow and stuck in a chicken-and-egg situation.
• Avoiding external funding: Since one of our basic objectives was to setup an incubation unit that a small community itself can develop, we adopted a basic policy of no external funding. All the capital expenditure is made by the employees themselves. This has the positive side of increasing the ownership level of people but making inventory management and accounting all the more complex. It also challenges us to create aggressive growth since some of that (especially in the services industry) is heavy on capital investment when growth kicks off.
• Making the companies break-even: Being a small company, the biggest challenge of course is always to make ends meet at the end of the day. With all the energy spent on the incubation and consensus building process, there are days when there is little time for the things that actually bring in money. A lot of this has to do with the fact that we are in early stages and systems and processes are being streamlined. However, our biggest challenge remains stabilizing our sales and delivery units. Only that will enable us to survive long enough to call this a success.
• Creativity and innovation: Understandably our business models are designed to be low risk, predictable stepping stones into entrepreneurship. This, by design, moves away from riskier, highly creative ideas. Our thesis here is that if you have enough free people (financially free and free in thinking) in close proximity, creativity and innovation will occur naturally. While innovation and creativity are not out immediate focus areas, we want to be able to assist people in that to whatever extent possible.

Conclusion

As a percentage, too many of our youth are groomed to become docile, white collar employees and to suppress their ideas for ‘practical reasons.’ In the long run, this is bad for the nation and the people. Allied Inc. is our attempt to try and change that and develop nurseries of entrepreneurship in Pakistan; to develop a mindset that looks at problems as opportunities but with a realistic, long term lens. These are still early days for us and we have a long way to go to prove our point. Our biggest challenge is perhaps to survive long enough for us to bring about perceptible change.

If you feel you can assist us in any way or if you have ideas on how we can do things better, please share your feedback with me at momer(at)alliedc.com. Our website is located at www.alliedc.com where you can find details of our specific IT offerings. A special thanks to Ali Bin Jamil for his support in the effort so far.

In 2005, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan imposed the requirement of clearing the GRE Subject Test prior to admission in the PhD programs. Students who were enrolled in the PhD programs at the time were required to clear the GRE Subject Test before submission of their theses. This article discusses the interpretation of the word “clear” used by the HEC , the fairness of this criteria, and the deficiencies in policies regarding the GRE Subject Test. We conclude that by imposing this requirement, HEC has created problems for students living far from big cities, those who do not have access to credit or debit cards, and those who cannot afford the hefty (approximately, Rs. 14,000) registration fee. In addition, the HEC team seemed unaware of the true mechanism of the GRE Subject Test, and as a result significant confusion exists as to what “clearing” the test really means.

Much of the text is taken from the HEC official letters and the GRE guides and the letters published by ETS.

When Did the HEC Decide?

The 7th meeting of Quality Assurance Committee was held on 19th April, 2005 in the regional office of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Lahore (see [1]). The meeting started with the approval of minutes of the last meeting of the Committee. The minutes were approved and the explanation of “international” with the Subject GRE Test used in the draft. It was explained to the members of the committee that word “international” is placed with the GRE Subject Test to draw a distinction between the GRE Type Test which is locally designed and already in practice, and the  standard GRE Test which is universally available for certain disciplines. The majority of the members and the chairman of the committee did not agree with the word “international” with Subject GRE as it does not exist in international nomenclature of the test. At last the members of the committee decided;

The word “international” will be removed from the Subject GRE-Test as Quality criteria of PhD level studies and it will be written as Subject GRE-Test, where available* with clarification at the bottom that local test will be designed for those subjects in which Subject GRE-Test is not available.

What should be a qualifying criterion?

First of all, it is useful to know a bit about the grading terminologies used by Education Testing Service (ETS), USA for GRE Subject Test. Later, we will discuss them in detail:

• Score (or scaled score)
• % Below (or percentile rank)
• Formula score (or raw score)

On May 30^th, 2006, Chairman HEC, Prof. Dr. Ata-ur-Rahman issued a letter no. 1-15/Adv(QA&LI) /2006/1394, in which he mentioned;

For admission of new students to Ph.D. as well as for upgradation/conversion of students already admitted in M.Phil to Ph.D., an International GRE (Subject) Test must be qualified (at least 50% score presently which will be increased to 60% after 3 years)

Please note that neither has the ETS yet released any document/method to find a percentage score of GRE test nor does the result card give any information about it. The GRE result card gives information about the score, percentage below (we call it percentile) and formula score.

In 2007, Chairman HEC, Dr. Ata-ur-Rahman wrote a letter [3] to the Vice Chancellors in which he asked:

Could you kindly ensure that no students currently enrolled in the disciplines of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology, Biology, English Literature, Chemistry, Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Psychology and allied disciplines are allowed to submit Ph.D theses in your university unless they have obtained at least a 50 percentile score in the respective international subject GRE examination. This is a rather low score presently and it will be increased to 60 percentile score in a couple of years.

In the letter mentioned above (in [3]), Dr. Ata-ur-Rahman used the term percentile score. As mentioned earlier, please again note that this terminology does not exist in the documents of ETS.

In July 2008, Prof. Dr. S. Sohail H. Naqvi, the Executive Director of HEC issued a letter [4], in which he mentioned the following criteria:

To “clear” the international GRE subject test the candidates will have to get Percentile Score equal or greater than the minimum Percentile Score which will be as follows:
i. 40% Percentile Score: Valid Until December 31, 2009
ii. 45% Percentile Score: Valid Until December 31, 2010
iii. 50% Percentile Score: Valid thereafter

So, what is a 40% Percentile Score?

If it is to be considered that Percentile Score means ‘percentile rank’ then 40% percentile rank means the 40% of 99 because the maximum percentile rank one can get is 99. Also this letter failed to clear the meaning of the word “Valid Until …”

In October 2009, Mr. Muneer Ahmed, Deputy Director (Quality Assurance), HEC issued a letter [5], to clarify the following:

I am directed to clarify that the qualifying score for the PhD Scholars who appeared in the International GRE Subject Test before 31st July 2008 is 40% (percentile) or 50%(percent) and after 31st July, 2008, percentile formula as conveyed earlier through the letter quoted above ([2] and [4]) will be applicable.

There was no need to say anything about such non-clarification. From the series of letters it is obvious that HEC was and still is facing dilemma about the criteria of clearing GRE.

In January 2010, HEC commission approved that [6]

GRE (International) Subject Test will be necessary at the time of admission to M.Phil/MS Programme leading to Ph.D.
The minimum acceptable scores are as follows:
i. 40% Percentile Score: Valid for Admissions until December 31, 2009
ii. 45% Percentile Score: Valid for Admissions until December 31, 2010
iii. 50% Percentile Score: Valid for Admissions until December 31, 2011.
iv. 60% Percentile Score: Valid for Admissions thereafter.
For presently continuing students (Admissions before January 11, 2010), the candidates must pass the GRE (International) Subject Test before submission of Ph.D. Dissertation. In disciplines where this test is not available, the test will be made available locally by National Testing Service (NTS), and if the Test is not available in NTS subject list, then a University Committee consisting of at least 3 Ph.D. faculty members in the subject area and approved by the HEC will conduct the Test at par with GRE (International) Subject Test.

Please note that the term “Percentile Score” doesn’t exist, it might be % below or percentile rank. Also clause (i) of above para has already been expired with respect to this letter [6] because it has now been imposed as a criterion to get admission in MS/M.Phil. Moreover subjects for which GRE test is not available, parallel to GRE Subject Test; the university commission of at least three PhDs will form their own test. This creates an injustice in many ways like fee, quality of test, checking criteria, and scoring method.

The text of the letter mentioned in [6] is available on the HEC website and it has been modified by the HEC without any intimation (it can be accessed here and old one is included in references). In the new letter, this test is only mandatory to get admission in PhD and also the word “international” with GRE Subject has been removed.

In March 2010, on answering a query from NUST, Rawalpindi, Mr. Muneer Ahmed wrote as follows [7]:

I am directed to inform you that all students enrolled/converted into PhD programme after May 31, 2005 and before July 31, 2008 are required to qualify International GRE Subject Test with 50% (percent) score and students enrolled/converted after July 31, 2008 have to qualify International GRE Subject Test with percentile score as mentioned in letter no. 1-10/(ED)/HEC/2008/961(copy attached)

It is not possible to find the percentage score of GRE Subject Test (see [8, p. 14]) and other thing is that why Mr. Muneer Ahmad didn’t refer to a latest letter[6] issued in January 2010.

In the following table we give the 50 percent score of each subject defined by the HEC as the 50 percent of the total scaled score. Please note that the HEC defined the score at 99 percentile rank in [10, page 14] as a total scaled score.

To get the 50 percent score in Chemistry and Computer Science, one has to just appear in GRE Subject Test without answering to any question.

How should we use the GRE, according to ETS, USA?

The “GRE Guide to the Use of Scores 2008-09” gives comprehensive information about the GRE test and is the best booklet to learn about the GRE grading terminologies. It is published by the GRE board. This guide is available on the ETS website; the following sentences/paragraphs are taken from this guide.

• Primary limitations of GRE test

Any GRE test, however, has two primary limitations: (1) it does not and cannot measure all the qualities that are important in predicting success in graduate study or in confirming undergraduate achievement and (2) it is an inexact measure; that is, only score differences that exceed the standard error of measurement of a given score can serve as reliable indications of real differences in academic knowledge and developed abilities [8, p. 5].

• Encouragement of appropriate use.

All users of GRE scores have an obligation to use the scores in accordance with published GRE Board policies and guidelines. Institutions have a responsibility to ensure that all individuals using GRE scores are aware of the GRE Board score-use policies and guidelines and to monitor the use of the scores, correcting instances of misuse when they are identified. The GRE Program staff is available to assist institutions in resolving score-misuse issues. [8, p. 6]

• Use Multiple Criteria

Regardless of the decision to be made, multiple sources of information should be used to ensure fairness and balance the limitations of any single measure of knowledge, skills, or abilities. These sources may include undergraduate grade point average, letters of recommendation, personal statement, samples of academic work, and professional experience related to proposed graduate study. GRE scores should not be used exclusively. [8, p. 6]

• Accept Only Official GRE Score Reports

The only official reports of GRE scores are those issued by Educational Testing Service and sent directly to approved institutions and organizations designated by the test takers. Scores obtained from other sources should not be accepted. [2, p. 6]

To ensure the authenticity of scores, the GRE Board urges that institutions accept only official reports of GRE scores received directly from ETS. [8, p. 9]

• Avoid Decisions Based on Small Score Differences

Small differences in GRE scores (as defined by the standard error of measurement) should not be used to make distinctions among examinees. Standard errors of measurement (SEMs) vary by test and are available in this publication. [8, p. 7]

• Minority Examinees (Students outside of USA)

GRE scores, like those on similar standardized tests, cannot completely represent the potential of any person, nor can they alone reflect an individual’s chances of long-term success in an academic environment. It should be remembered that the GRE tests provide measures of certain types of developed abilities and achievement, reflecting educational and cultural experience over a long period. Special care is required in interpreting the GRE scores of students who may have had educational and cultural experiences somewhat different from those of the traditional majority. [8, p. 8]

• Confidentiality and Authenticity of GRE Scores

GRE scores are confidential and are not to be released by an institutional recipient without the explicit permission of the examinee. GRE scores are not to be included in academic transcripts. Dissemination of score records should be kept at a minimum, and all staff who have access to them should be explicitly advised of the confidential nature of the scores. [8, p. 9]

Different types of scores

It is also useful to reiterate that there are three types of grading system in GRE subject.

• Score (or scaled score)
• % Below (or percentile rank)
• Formula score (or raw score)

[ Cutout: Report of Scores ]

The range of scaled scores is from 200 to 990, in 10-points increments, although the score range for any particular Subject Test is usually smaller [2, page 11]. Scaled score is a basic analogy to compare two examinees.

Scaled scores on the same Subject Tests generally are directly comparable across years. A Chemistry Test score of 650 in 2007, for example, should be considered equivalent to a Chemistry Test score of 650 earned in 2006. [8, p. 11]

Percentile rank means the percentage of examinees in a group who obtained scores lower than specified score [9]. Percentile ranks of two examinees cannot be comparable for two different tests on same subject, while score is comparable for same subject test but not for different.

Subject Test scores should be compared only with other scores on the same Subject Tests (for example, a 680 on the Physics Test is not equivalent to a 680 on the Chemistry Test). Percentile ranks should be compared only if they are based on the same reference population. [8, p.7]

ETS writes the following about Score and Percentile rank.

Note that although a score represents the same level of ability regardless of when the score was earned, its percentile rank may vary, depending on the scores of the group with which it is compared [9].

Percentile ranks shown on score reports are based on the performance of the current reference group for each test regardless of when the scores were earned. The percentile rank for any score may vary over the years depending on the scores of the group with which the score is compared. Thus, when two or more applicants are being compared, the comparison should be made on the basis of their respective scores.[8, p. 9]

At the score of 700 in Computer Science there is a 42 percentile rank for the performance of the all examinees who were tested between July 1, 2004 – June 30, 2007 (see [8, p. 14]) and 40 percentile for the performance of all examinees who tested between July 1, 2003 – June 30, 2006 (See [10, p. 14])

One can find the following about percentile rank by flipping the “Report of Scores*”.

The percentile ranks in this report indicate the percentage of examinees who scored below your score. Note that these percentile ranks may be different from those that applied when the score were originally reported to you if the scores were earned prior to July 2009. This reflects annual updating of these data to permit admission officers to compare scores, whenever earned, with those for a recent reference group.

Formula score is the number of correct responses* minus one-fourth the number of incorrect responses rounded to the nearest whole number. The maximum formula score depends upon the total numbers of MCQs in the test.

* Result card sent by ETS, USA to the examinee or score recipient.
** Here “responses” mean questions which are usually multiple choices.

Is it an international test?

It should be remembered that the GRE tests provide measures of certain types of developed abilities and achievement, reflecting educational and cultural experience over a long period. Special care is required in interpreting the GRE scores of students who may have had educational and cultural experiences somewhat different from those of the traditional majority. [8, p. 8]

HEC officials are saying it an “international” test but the facts are against it. In the following table the number of examinees, all over the world, are given who took test between July 1, 2004, and June 30, 2007 [8, p.14].

Please note that computer science is one of the biggest fields of study and only 1870 examinees took the GRE Subject Test in a year.

General Rules for PhD Scholars

If someone gets the admission in PhD, then generally he/she has to fulfill the following requirements to get the PhD degree (no doubt, these are major requirements).

• Approval of Research Proposal or Synopsis (before or after the admission)
• Course work (not compulsory all over the world)
• Research paper (not compulsory in some countries but compulsory in Pakistan.)
• Thesis writing
• Defense of the thesis

If the thesis of some Pakistani PhD scholar is ready for submission then he cannot submit his thesis because of the extra imposed condition of GRE Subject Test, which is usually used as a recommended test (but not required) to get admission in the few universities of USA (see number of examinees per year as a proof). Also this shows that research paper(s) and thesis of the PhD scholar have no worth and no quality without this test.

It is also strange that if the PhD scholar has qualified GRE Subject Test then all the work (research) done under the supervision of such person (supervisor), who is usually non-qualified in GRE Subject Test, attains HEC quality standard.

Taking the GRE Subject test and other information

If someone decides to take GRE Subject Test, then the only way is online registration through ETS website by using online payment mode (by Credit or Debit card).

• Test Fee: 160 US Dollars (Rs. 14000 approx.)
• Duration: 2 hours and 50 minutes
• Conducted thrice a year (in April, October, November)
• Centers (Pakistan): Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore
• Limited number of seats in every center.
• Result announcement after 40 days of the test date.

Conclusions

1. The GRE Subject Test spans 2 hours and 50 minutes, at the price of US$ 160 (approximately Rs. 14,000). It is not affordable for a majority of the students and this heavy cost puts real extra burden on these students. In fact, many good students, who would easily pass it, hesitate to take the GRE Subject Test because of its huge fee.
2. Percentile rank is best to compare the students of same subject in the same test (in which they appeared) but it is not recommended to be used as a tool for making merit.
3. ETS recommends the use of “Scaled Score” for comparing the ability of students as they appear in the test at different schedule (three times in a year).
4. This test is not generally meant to be used for the students and institutions outside the United States.
5. Most public sector universities in Pakistan are not score recipients of ETS and it is very easy to use fake result cards to get admission, and the ETS never confirms the result to institutions if they are not score recipients.
6. It is very difficult to register for the test because many students don’t have Credit or Debit cards for payment through the internet.
7. Pakistan is a very big country and this test is conducted only in three cities, with limited number of seats at each location. This is really creating a big problem for the students living far from these cities.
8. The number of examinees per year clearly indicates the popularity of the test. For example, 1870 students in the subject of Computer Science and 2797 students in the subject of Chemistry appeared in a year all over the world.
9. Percentile rank actually is a comparison of the students of certain group taking GRE Subject Test in a period of last three years with respect to the test date. In eight subjects, Pakistani students are compared against a small community of students from all over the world, and for the remaining subjects the criteria is totally different.
10. The HEC team was unaware of the true mechanism of the GRE Subject Test. Yet, they decided that a PhD scholar must appear in this test, just to meet international standards no matter what he/she will score.
11. There are a lot of deficiencies in the HEC letters regarding GRE Subject Test. Against the decision of 7^th meeting of Quality Assurance Committee of HEC, the HEC officials are still communicating it as an international test.
12. All the grading terminologies used by the HEC don’t match with the ETS standard terminologies.This clearly shows that HEC officials are unaware of the objective and mechanism of the GRE Subject Test.

References

[1] Minutes of the 7th meeting of Quality Assurance Committee dated 19th April, 2005
[2] No 1-15/Adv(QA&LI) /2006/1394 dated May 30, 2006
[3] No. 4-7/CHR/HEC/07/807 dated April 3, 2007
[4] No. 1-10/(ED)/HEC/2008/96/ dated July 14, 2008
[5] No. 1-G/DD-QA/HEC/2009/45 dated October 23, 2009
[6] No. 4-7/CHR/HEC/2010/06 dated January 11, 2010
[7] DD/QA/HEC/NUST/2010/224 dated March 05, 2010
[8] GRE Guide to the Use of Scores 2008-09
[9] Interpreting Your GRE® Scores (2008-09)
[10] GRE Guide to the Use of Scores 2007-08

All the references can be downloaded from here.

Atiq-ur-Rehman is a PhD scholar at the Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan. His areas of research are difference and functional equations, real functions, inequalities in monotonic, and convex functions and he has 8 research papers. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.