This is the good part.

The flip side is that HEC went on a bit of a spending binge and our Universities are still not the centres of intellectual dynamism one may have expected from the relative massive increase in funding, especially in the social sciences.

The HEC needs to pause now, take a serious second look at all its programmes, and improve both its own internal efficiencies and those of its client universities. It has fortunately rolled back (actually forced to do so by circumstances not by choice) its highly expensive programme for establishing ‘foreign’ university campuses in Pakistan, which had clouded the good work done by it. HEC needs now to consolidate and stop further expansion in the number of universities, so that the desired intellectual ambience can take root on our campuses. I am afraid this has not really happened, and quality has suffered.

A comment, if I may, about the thousands sent abroad for PhD. There is considerable worry in many Universities about the breadth of knowledge and competence of these young men. Could this have to do with the fact that the HEC is now pretty much scraping close to the bottom of the barrel to find suitable candidates? Could the foreign hosts be taking them in because they have financial problems of their own and welcome foreign funds to subsidise their own nationals.

Perhaps, we should fund our scholars ONLY for Master’s programmes (18- 24 months), and let the host University fund the candidate after this period if he/she is up to the mark. Let us remember that research and higher studies is in distress in these host countries in terms of funds and the number of their nationals willing to enter the arena; they badly need young foreign minds to fill the gap.

The HEC now needs to change into a different operational mode. The sustainability of present funding levels is doubtful in the long run. No new Universities, please, in spite of what the politicians declare on their visits.

As for research, funding must now be built around researchers and not for setting up a so called infrastructure. In an earlier incarnation, I would intervene considerably to find the ‘poles’ around which the academic tent could be erected. Not very successfully, I admit!

A comment about the insistence on a PhD degree for faculty evaluation and promotion. The number of papers is increasing, but the ability to teach and transmit and to nurture the thinking mind is suffering. So the so called evaluation rules on this subject need a major review.

The HEC is setting up Universities the same way as degree colleges were set up in yester years. It must move away from the ‘college’ syndrome and allow the Universities to become bigger in size (student population) as well as making them ‘universal’ in pursuit of learning. This requires HEC to encourage multi discipline campuses where the social sciences civilize the scientists and engineers and medics. Can we have research in our medical universities without good biologists, chemists, biophysicists and the dreaded biotechnologists? Can we expect our scientists to design their own test equipment without good mechanical and electronic workshops? And can the engineers expect to do research without the exciting presence of physicists, chemists and biologists in their midst on the Campus? I am afraid not!

AND of course all these scientists, engineers, IT chaps and computer wizards have the right to be civilized by rubbing shoulders with social scientists, literature buffs, , economists, historians anthropologists etc.

Finally, as a member of the Steering Committee on Higher Education (SCHE) set up by Pres. Musharraf in 2002, which led to the establishment of the HEC, I would have been happier, (and the article in Nature would have carried more weight), if its authors had been not been members of the SCHE team, whether directly as Members of SCHE or indirectly as proof readers and language correctors)!

There is for sure a lack of genuine interest on part of some of the faculty in undertaking research but some are trying their level best. Their zeal and their efforts may not be judged by the impact factor of the journal in which their articles get published. I even think that some credit shall be reserved, does not matter how small, for those who succeed in publishing their articles and ideas in the local journals with zero impact factor. One should be extremely careful in relying on the impact factor of a journal while judging the quality of a research article. Don’t be surprised if the editor of a high profile international journal contacts you just before publishing your article suggesting to include a few articles, published in the earlier issues of his journal, in the bibliography of your article in order to help enhance the impact factor of the journal.

While we should learn from our past mistakes, there is no point in either eulogizing or criticizing personalities especially those who are no more at the helm of the affairs. Doing so would not help enhance, even a tiny bit, the quality of education in our country. The academia must work towards an environment on university campuses that is conducive for the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Every body has a right to have his own ideas but one shall not impose his/her ideas on others. Let us work towards a tolerant society and be receptive to positive criticism. Let us ask ourselves how much have we actually contributed to the enhancement of our education quality.

You have raised very usefull points including the ground realities, the ghost shcools, the ongoing business oriented education at all levels ranging from school to university levels; the poor monitoring hierarchy at almost all levels starting from primary to secondary, and the lack of a system of education satisfying the education needs of our scoiety, and providing for the society with graduates equipped with relevant expertise and knowledge.

The above mentioned points are all such entities required to be networked propelry in such a way that none of the processes put in place for some reason, should not end up landing at a deadlock. The processes for quality monitoring or evaluation and assessment reasons of some parameter, must not have open ends, rather they must have their destination ends close smoothly into triggering other processes on the way–either to become some stimulating inputs back into the system or must show up as productive outputs in the form of graduates, research findings and consultancy services; satisfyign the needs and requirements of education stake holders.

However, the HEC is an adminitrative entity where some good steps have been taken and are underway at the moment, which I beleive have been producing results that are relatively better compared to the old UGC (VCs club) style of administration. I am not not very much aware of the ongoing processes put in place by the HEC for achieving some outcomes or evalualation and assessment objectives. However, some suggestions are humbly forwarded:

1. Outcome Based Eduction at the UG/PG level
2. Rejuvanating research oriented MSc and PhD level education,
3. Exhibitions at the National levels to encourage competition at some (if not all) levels
4. A meaningful consultancy element aimed at encouraging industry and social sector invovlement
5. Proper newtorking among the universities for developing a viable education and academic culture
6. International and National examiners for HEC affiliated Universities, aimed at continuously evolving UG/PG degree programs (similar to GIKI) examiners systems
7. Idenitfying educations stake holders such sponsors departments, industry players/advisors, students, alumni

Another point that I would like to share is that in most cases the PhD students are not (?) genuinly interested in solving the problem at hand. They are rather interested in getting a degree. I think it is economic driven. Majority of our student work hard but that is physical not mental. They are happy to work late night working on machines producing raw data without any understanding of the underlying priciple. When it comes to thinking, they show their laziness.

Given this poor intake, ill-prepared and poorly motivated teachers, mass inbreeding and poor governance our universities. with few rare exceptions, were little more than poor replicas of community colleges. The result was, and perhaps still is, that hardly 5-10 % of applicants with through-out first class academic background in sciences and engineering from these institutions would qualify a GRE (general)-type test and interview for MS admission into institutions such as PIEAS (former CNS.). About 20-25 % of those admitted would fail in the zero semester based on 1st/2nd year undergraduate physics and math. Only the cream of those surviving zero semester would and did perform well in their higher studies abroad.

The fact that the 100 or so annual scholarships for studies abroad requiring a decent score in GRE in a population of 150 million could not be utilized during the late eighties and nineties is another example of this sad state of affairs. Given that only the most talented of our students get a chance to pursue careers in science and engineering these examples were and still are a poor reflection on the state of education in Pakistan.

A more systematic analysis of such factors were needed at the outset of the new education reform effort, which to my knowledge was not carried out. This might have led to the realization that while strengthening the research effort in some of the universities the most urgent need was to concentrate on producing quality teachers for the lower tears of education. In fact based on a nationwide survey of university physics departments in early 2000 a proposal to this effect was submitted the Pakistan Council of Science and Technology and the then newly established HEC made some efforts to implement some of these recommendations.

Let me conclude by stating that by helping establish several new universities in different parts of the country HEC has addressed the accessibility problem. Heavy investment in connectivity, including teleconferencing, technical literature, laboratory equipment. Oversees scholarships and foreign faculty hiring has in principle paved the way for quality related issues. However this has been done across the board in stead of concentrating these resources where sufficient absorption capacity existed. The result, in my opinion, is insufficient gains in research quality at the expense of producing good quality teachers. A recent e-mail to an HEC official pasted below highlights some of these concerns.

Needless to say this debate could greatly benefit from more detailed dispassionate analysis of various aspects of the issues raised in this discussion.

Regards,
Abdullah
————————————————————————————————
e-mail of June 17, 2009 to an HEC Official on ‘Quality of High Education’

I had been thinking to write to you after interviewing some people for the AU faculty over the last year. I finally decided to do so after reading the following item in the Dawn:

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/letters-to-the-editor/shortlisting-for-vcs-appointment-769

I greatly appreciate the Quality Assurance efforts of HEC with which I have been associated in the past. However besides setting minimum criterion for faculty induction , student enrollment, course prescription and research evaluation and the governance issues highlighted in the above mentioned item, a lot more needs to be done to arrest the the accelerating downward trend of the quality of higher education in the country. Here I would simply site three examples to illustrate my point.

1. About a year ago I gave a simple physics test for applicants for the post of lecturer and assistant professor to test their concepts of the undergraduate course they were expected to teach. The highest score among the 11 candidates, 10 MPhil and one PhD from local universities including the top ranking one, was 40%. The candidate with PhD from the top ranking university was not even shortlisted for the interview.

2. More recently while interviewing a PhD under the supervision of a foreign professor at a newly established Center of Mathematics supported by HEC, I got curious when he couldn’t explain some very basic terms related to his PhD topic. He didn’t have transcripts of his PhD courses but looking at the transcripts of his MSc Mathematics courses, I noticed that he had a Gold medal with A+ grade in several courses and 100% marks in combinatorics. Even so he could not define the term ‘combinatorics’.

3. Yesterday while interviewing some other Math PhD students at a top ranking local university we found out that one of them, with no physics courses beyond HSSC, was working on “Open Loop Control in Non-linear Dynamical Systems’ and another one with no physics course beyond SSC general science, was working on ‘ Effect of Heat Transfer on Peristaltic Flow with Variable Viscosity’. Needless to say that none of them have the slightest clue of the underlying physics of their PhD topics. When asked if they were advised to sit in some relevant courses in the neighboring physics department the answer was an emphatic no.

I shall be happy to share with you more details of these cases. HEC might consider initiating a process of getting regular feedback from the end users of our University graduates.

With best regards,
Abdullah

Are we measuring the Performance of Universities or the performance of a Universities regulator (so to speak)? The metric so far being discussed appear to be the metric for the performance of Universities and since most ideas are being influenced from our western experience, where universities are evaluated, we are trying to fit HEC into that.

A Higher Education Commission is a unique 3rd world institution that has no equivalent in the west. This is similiar to NADRA for example where there is no global precendence for what they are doing and therefore NEW metric are needed to evaluate NADRA’s performance. Another way of looking at HEC performance is that of a Regulator’s performance like PTA (telecom) or SBP (banking) where how many customers enrolled or how much profitability acheieved are not the metric for PTA/SBP but for the individual organizations under their regulation.

The question to ask is who is the stakeholder in HEC and then determine what is important to the stakeholders and that should be the metric. To me, the stakeholders are the general public (primarily the students) and the industry which employs the students. For students the metric can be derived from
1. Cost of education
2. Merit based opportunity
3. Access to higher education
4. Quality of Education (not in terms of published papers but in terms of value-addition to their lives – like jobs)

On the other hand the metric for the Industry can bederived from
1. Cost of available skill
2. Relevance of skill
3. Quality of skill

If this is how the stakeholders view the performance of the HEC, then this is how HEC’s performance should be evaluated.

As for secondary and higher secondary education, I think efforts must be made to standardize our curriculum across all boards of education. I think a lot of work has been done in the area. More needs to be done. The most important thing is that all segments of the society must be taught at the same level. I suggest formation of an organization like the HEC for the Secondary and Higher Secondary Education run by professionals just as HEC whereas ministry of education only serve as an overall policy tool for the politicians and generals, whoever is ruling Pakistan. A chunk of funding from MoE should be diverted to this commission and it should be tasked with standardizing, reviewing, improving and democracizing our education system. And I believe that this should be done as soon as possible.

In countries like the United Kingdom where Pakistani is synonymous with Taxi Drivers and Fast Food joint-keepers, Pakistani students have gone and done good research. I have seen it first hand which is also corroborated through the information presented in the article in Nature. With all due respect to Prof. Hoodbhoy, I think he has reached new levels of skepticism which I have not witnessed ever in my short stint as a post-graduate researcher.

As for the quality of students, I think Pakistan produces one of the best in the world. I say this after teaching for about four years in a university of international repute in UK. I agree that the education system is not in an ideal state but you can say that about most education systems in the world. There have been severe criticisms recently of the American High School as well as the British GCSEs by the Americans and the British themselves. I think the most important aspect that defines a Pakistani student or any other student from a developing country like ours is the focus, unity of purpose and the hard work that I have seen my colleagues and peers do. I have come to the conclusion that at the end of the day the person who succeeds is not the one who is the best equipped or has the best facilities but is the person who refuses to die and give up, the one who fights hard till the end. I think this is the most important characteristic of our people that I have witnessed first hand wherever I have lived in the world.

I thank Dr. Ata-ur-Rehman, HEC, Government of Pakistan and most importantly people of Pakistan for reposing trust in me and countless like me and sending us abroad to pursue higher education. I hope and wish that I have done justice to the aspirations of the people of Pakistan (I have been a recipient of a reward by the Royal Society and published papers at the best conference in my area of study). Alas! I would just say Pakistan Zindabad!

Editor’s Note: This comment has been edited for content. Please refrain from personalizing the discussion.