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)!