STEP – Science, Technology, and Education in Pakistan

Editor’s Note: Since the establishment of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in 2002, the higher education sector in Pakistan has undergone a transformation both in its size and its nature. Dr. Sohail Naqvi, the Executive Director of the HEC, has been at the helm of many of these changes. STEP’s student editor Mariyam Khalid recently sat down with Dr. Naqvi to learn more about the HEC and its mandate. In the second of this two part interview, the scope of the HEC’s mandate and its policy-making procedures are discussed. The interview concludes with Dr. Naqvi’s vision for the future of the HEC.

STEP: Do you think that the HEC has taken too much on its plate? It is directly involved in curriculum setting, hiring and firing professors, setting up distance education classrooms, and even assessing universities. Should the HEC delegate some of these tasks?

SN: We definitely should delegate some of these tasks and we are now actively involved in trying to distance ourselves from institutions of programs. Earlier, we got involved with so many of these things because nobody was doing them nor did we have any mechanism for them, for example, foreign faculty hiring. Actually, Faculty hiring should be done by universities as per best practices, where the universities themselves identify the qualified personnel, negotiate their salaries, and provide them incentives to join the faculty. Universities are fully capable of doing that but they were not doing it. Which is why we had to get involved in the execution of a lot of programs. The scholarship program is another example that comes to mind. But we are now shifting our focus. For example, we are shifting the scholarship program so that it now needs to be run by the universities as per best practices. So there was a need to build the capacities of the universities to perform best practices and have good governance. There are other small sized agencies that are not doing enough and are not widespread enough. For example, the HEC has not been involved in the domain of colleges at the moment, and we are criticized on various forums that we should be. But it is a capacity issue; the HEC can only do so much. It is an evolving organization as any living organization has to be. We took on the tasks that nobody else had done before. There were things we needed to do ourselves to get things started. We have designed a lot of these things so that they would start moving at an arm’s length over time and ultimately become independent entities away from the HEC. So the answer to your question is that yes, we could delegate but at times we need to build the organization to which we can delegate.

STEP: Do you see the domain of the HEC decreasing in the future because of these delegations?

SN: No, because the problem that we work with is both large in magnitude and wide in spectrum. There is so much more that the world demands and these demands constantly evolve with the progress. Take quality assurance as an example. In the U.K., you have the Quality Assurance Agency, a huge independent entity that solely focuses on this issue. It is capable of carrying out research assessment exercises where it assesses research work and provides rankings. Development of quality assurance processes, ranking processes, and research assessment processes, etc. are performed by huge entities that have been developed around the world. Therefore, the HEC’s work will keep on increasing in the future. However, the HEC has to ensure that its main goal is to build the capacities within the universities so that when they are built then HEC can work as an external quality assurance mechanism or as a funding source.

STEP: You mentioned that the HEC is not involved with the colleges. Does the HEC see them as being beyond its mandate?

SN: Colleges are under the academic jurisdiction of the provincial governments. Therefore, they are legally and administratively beyond the HEC’s mandate. Colleges are directly tied to universities because they are affiliated with them and we do not want to shift this responsibility. But again, we can build the capacity of the university. Each affiliating university, such as Punjab University, has to basically become a mini HEC or become a quality assurance center for all of its colleges. They should take that responsibility. We have to build this capacity and we have started to move in this direction. Our first foray into this domain is trying to build distance education centers in these colleges to cater to private students, that is, those who are privately enrolled and are not looked after academically by these universities. These centers will enable universities to take care of these students in a proper manner. So this is an indirect way we are getting involved with the colleges.

STEP: Currently, there are two parallel streams of education in Pakistan; the madrassah system and the secular system. Do you think there is a way to merge these two streams into a common system?

SN: Absolutely! After all, such a system has previously existed in our history. Madrassahs have been a part of our history since the birth of Islam. I have visited the oldest Madrassah itself in Morocco and that is more than a thousand years old. I do not think there is any issue of the practical education not fitting into modern requirements. However, we should have a mechanism in our country, whereby a person coming through one system of education is not limited or barred from going anywhere else. So, we have to look at the courses that the madrassahs are teaching and that they are not teaching. If they are not teaching Mathematics or English or whatever that the policies of the country mandate to be taught, then the law needs to be applied to everyone. It is important for students to have the opportunity and the flexibility so that if they want to study jurisprudence they can, and if they want to study history then they also can. The basic idea is that the academia is open. We do not have closed universities and we do not have closed educational institutions. Everything that needs to be taught is open. These are the days of open courseware where everything is available through the Internet. The same openness must be applied to all education systems in Pakistan. If there is a madrassah curriculum, it needs to be put on a website, and it needs to be open to academic discourse just like courses at other universities. For instance, one can take an economic course at LUMS and ask questions concerning different issues, such as, why certain things are being done? what are the intended learning outcomes? and what are the pre-requisites? The rules of the game need to be the same; the quality assurance mechanism needs to be across the board. It is not a western concept to have quality assurance or openness. So I certainly believe that you can have a system that has the richness and the openness to have everyone involved and everyone’s point of view taken care of while also adhering to international practices of quality assurance.

STEP: Does the HEC plan to do something to unify these two different streams?

SN: This is not our domain of operation. As a policy domain we would say that this is something a university should consider. But the actual roots are down at the school level where this issue has to be sorted out and that is not in our domain.

STEP: Could you walk us through the making of a new policy at the HEC?

SN: Well, when a policy idea comes up, we typically set up a working group. Then depending upon the nature and the size of the problem we develop drafts and circulate them to the concerned people. They would bring changes to it, approve it or not, and then finally it goes to the commission for approval.

STEP: Do you have any mechanism for gauging ideas from academics?

SN: We are an open organization in the sense that everybody, each one of us, has email, and we are all required to respond to every single email that we get. In that regards, it is a very open system. In addition, university faculties have their own circles and groups, which they work within and ideas sort of come up. Policies are big things that the entire nation needs to be involved in. They can be localized, for example, we are trying to focus on and develop a sexual harassment policy for academia in Pakistan. So we’ll put something together, it will be widely circulated, and then it will brew up into something narrow. But again, it will still be broad enough to be applicable to every higher education institution in Pakistan.

STEP: This method of gauging ideas seems very informal. Do you think there should be a formal mechanism whereby academics could actively debate and discuss issues regarding higher education?

SN: It is not an informal thing in the sense that while the start (when someone comes up with an idea or identifies an issue to address) is informal, once the idea is there and it is decided that a policy should be developed, then it enters into the formal domain. There is a formal committee or task force constituted where we try to have maximum and most diverse participation. Then drafts are prepared, circulated, and put on the website. You first get input from everybody and then you go through the formal process.

STEP: So anybody can contribute to the policy making process at any time?

SN: Yes, there is no question of having it closed. Academia is open; that is the whole concept of academia.

STEP: The HEC has always endeavored to facilitate universities. Why do you think some faculty members have been resistant to its changes?

SN: Well, some of our policies were perhaps drafted in haste; we wanted to do a lot of things in a hurry and perhaps did not have as wide consultations as were required. So there were certain things that we were proposing that were felt as if they were not in the best interest of these people. It was a communication issue. Also, since we were talking about a lot of entrenched interests, we were disturbing the status quo, so an immediate reaction also came about at times. It was a mixture of things; we were partly at fault. Some of the faculty members were not ready for the change. I guess that is the nature of deal. If you want to bring about change then that’s what happens.

STEP: What is your vision for the HEC? What goals have you set for yourself for the next ten years?

SN: The vision and the goal is to build the institution of the HEC in such a manner that myself or any other individual becomes irrelevant. We want to build the processes that allow one person to go and another to come in while still maintaining a very strong and vibrant system. Another goal is to have a much greater and improved communication with the universities, the students, and the community at large. We want the entire system of higher education to view and accept the HEC as a partner in the development process of the higher education sector.

A very big challenge that we foresee is in terms of funding. This heavy reliance of public sector universities on government is not going to allow us to pull out of this narrow regime of availability of higher education that we are currently in. We have estimated the funds it would take us to maintain our current growth rate and that runs into trillions. And that’s not going to come from the government alone. So their [the universities’] capacity to raise funds and operate just like private universities, such as LUMS, needs to be developed and that will happen once the community starts taking interest in them. Once you get expatriate Pakistanis as well as local industrialists to work with these universities, the universities will get out of this mindset that the government is the only entity that can support them. Aligned with the financial systems is, building a safety net through enhanced equity in our higher education system. Even though we do not think so, we have basically somewhat of an elitist system of higher education, primarily centered on the big cities and catering to a certain class. Regardless of whether the tuition fees is a hundred rupees or five hundred rupees, living in Lahore or Karachi along with the cost of books and transport alone require financial means that are not available to most students. And what about the other areas? The secondary cities; even the suburban areas like Shahdara or Kala Shah Kaku. We need to spread the higher education institution across the country without sacrificing the quality and provide a much more equitable system so that those who need support are fully supported and those who do not need support also put in their fair share.

The final challenge is in terms of quality assurance; building the world class systems that are linked and have a direct relationship with their counterpart international organization so that we are recognized and our degrees and our systems are recognized.

Related Post: A Conversation with HEC Executive Director Dr. Sohail Naqvi: Part 1