The recent article by Sohaib Khan has touched a very important subject. Let me start by saying that I do not disagree with the core idea of that piece which, if I am allowed to summarize in a sentence, would be that research in Pakistan needs to be relevant to the local problems, with young researchers mentored towards practical, solutions-oriented research. What I contend in this article is that the view point in his article, while correct, is only partial. The purpose of developing university-based research should be much broader. You cannot, or rather should not, try to build a research ecosystem just for the purpose of achieving short-term, balance-sheet like, measurable goals. That will happen, as a natural corollary of a burgeoning research ecosystem.
My contention is regarding the purpose of promoting university research in Pakistan. Surely, it cannot be only to solve pressing current socio-economic problems of Pakistan. If that were so, a much better approach, in purely economic terms, would be to setup a few research centers (like the National Labs of United States or centers like KRL, NESCOM, etc.) that hire highly-qualified people to lead a few groups in identified focus areas. These groups can hire local graduate and under-graduate students for thematic research. Moreover, many of the most pressing technological issues facing Pakistan do not need cutting-edge or new research. Many of the problems with our power-, gas- and water-infrastructure have well-known solutions. Even many of the most basic military requirements can be solved locally if proper governmental policies (local business subsidies, tax-breaks, transparency) are implemented, allowing existing technologies to be developed by indigenous companies. Indeed, Pakistan already has companies with the engineering capabilities needed to solve many of our problems. As two examples, Emerging Energy System and Integrated Dynamics can provide solutions in energy and military sectors, respectively. The barriers to such solutions are political, economic, and social, and thus outside the purview of this forum. But, it would be naïve to say that academia can overcome these barriers and deliver solutions to the common-man.
So, what then is, or should be, the purpose of fostering academic research in Pakistan? On top of building a knowledge-based economy where entrepreneurship springs from academic efforts, there are three other, equally important, reasons to foster academic research. First, developing and retaining a pool of intellectuals and academics that can enrich any debate and social discourse within the country, and also stop or reverse brain drain. Surely, you cannot have a robust higher education system without retaining and attracting the best. Secondly, there are pedagogical benefits to inculcating research within universities. A research-active faculty remains up-to-date in their field, benefiting the students while also developing their research skills. Even more so, qualified academics tend to have greater exposure, and a different world view, which can be refreshing for the students, enriching them both personally and socially. Finally, by doing research at the cutting edge, academia can not only identify potential future problems, but also offer solutions when the need arises. As two examples, academic research seeded the development of Atomic bomb by the US in WWII and Britain’s cipher-breaking at Bletchley Park.
Each of these purposes of fostering research in universities has a long-term and intrinsically unquantifiable benefit. Building a robust research ecosystem should be viewed in a manner similar to a country’s defense; neither has an immediate benefit to the man on the street, yet both are essential for prosperity and progress.
Turning now to the core ingredient necessary to build and maintain an eco-system for research in universities: recent PhDs. A higher education system is like an automobile, with the policies, universities, and funding agencies the body and engine of the car, but the human resources (academics and students) are the essential fuel that runs the automobile. The more refined the fuel, the more smooth the running. I focus on the needs of young graduates for an important reason: fresh graduates that decide to return to Pakistan align their career prospective with that of their host university and, on a larger scale, with the academic profile of the country.
However, it appears that the policies of universities and governments are not adequately addressing the need to attract the best and brightest young graduates. HEC has one program for placement of fresh PhDs, whereby eligible PhD’s are guaranteed placement in Pakistani universities for a PKR 80,000 salary. However, this program might paradoxically promote mediocrity, as the brightest returns would anyway be guaranteed placement in the top 5-6 universities in Pakistan.
I contend that while a good salary is a must, we cannot use salary as an incentive to lure and retain our best minds. The fresh graduates wanting to return to Pakistan do so of other-than-monetary motives (patriotism, youthful idealism, family, religion, etc.). In my discussion with recently graduated friends regarding their decision to return, having teaching and research freedom are their top two concerns. The first of these is largely affected by the openness of the universities while the second is related to the policies and constraints set by funding agencies.
Academic freedom would mean the ability to innovate within their universities in terms of course content. Allowing new experimental courses not only introduces new areas to students but also piques their interest in those areas, potentially helping the faculty in research. Research freedom means the ability to choose a research area of their choosing, perhaps close to their PhD area of expertise, allowing the use of their skill set developed during graduate research.
Such research freedom can only be provided if these fresh PhDs are provided with initial, no-strings-attached, funding by either their universities of employment or funding agencies. One possible option would be to offer competitive awards, similar to the NSF CAREER awards, that provide seed-funding to new and aspiring faculty without requiring local or socially relevant research. These can be offered for 3-5 years, with renewal every year after the first two based on performance. Thereafter the research agenda is set by the agencies to shepherd research, in a manner similar to that suggested in Sohaib’s article. Another approach, quite forcefully argued in a DAWN article, would be to develop endowment funds at universities that allow them to support and attract the brightest fresh PhD’s.
Forcing young PhDs to immediately focus on locally relevant research will in fact be counter-productive. As Sohaib’s article points out quite correctly, young faculty members need confidence and experience to do publishable research that also solves local problems. Another important aspect to consider for these fresh graduates is their remoteness from Pakistan during the 5-7 years of their higher education. Their grasp of local problems will only develop over time. Time is also needed to develop rapport with local researchers to do cross-disciplinary research, typical of a socially-relevant work, that needs collaboration. In fact, any good researcher will, over a period of time, attempt to address local problems even if it requires them to step out of their comfort zones.
To summarize, while socially-relevant research should be one of the main goals for developing research infrastructure in universities it should be developed for other, equally important, purposes: attracting and retaining the best academics, providing up-to-date course contents, and preparing for unforeseen problems. Furthermore, for the research ecosystem to flourish it requires attracting and keeping the most brilliant minds within Pakistan. For this purpose the aspirations of these academics, and especially the recently graduated and returning PhDs, needs to be taken into account. Thus, a balance needs to be maintained through seeding constraint-free research by junior research faculty, mentoring them towards research benefiting the man-on-the street as their research experience matures.
Affan Syed is a post doctoral research associate at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California. His research focus is on systems research in terrestrial and underwater sensor networks. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan in 2000, and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering and PhD in Computer Science from University of Southern California in 2004, and 2009 respectively. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.
An excellent article. A couple of points: even the NSF CAREER award is evaluated by a panel of researchers who, always way the broad impact of a proposal in concert with it’s intellectual merit. As we can never predict where undirected research will take us, I believe Prof. Sohaib’s insistence on local relevance is important to ensure that society in general appreciates the purpose of investing in research. You advocate a middle road, but somehow I’m more inclined to err on the side of demonstrably relevant research.
Iftikhar,
First, thanks for the comments. One of the purpose of this article was to make the case that while doing relevant research is essential, its likely to fail in doing *any* relevant academia research as its ecosystem is dependent on attracting and keeping fresh PhDs. Even if the larger goal of locally relevant research is the only thing we want to do, making a small tactical deviation for fresh PhDs is essential to seed the system. A similar comment was made by Dr. Naqvi in a similar question posited to him some time back on STEP, I quote
“You see there is a supply and demand issue. Pakistan’s problem, and this is something that one needs to really, really understand, is that of capacity. We just don’t have that many researchers, who are doing research. So of these people who are applying for research now, if you want to put in an additional constraint of forcing them to focus on local problems only, then you will have to define what is locally relevant and what is not. That appears to be an easy problem to solve but in practice it would be just about impossible. There are only degrees of relevance here. All research is relevant to Pakistan but the time frame in which it may impact local conditions is going to be different.”
Separately, at the risk of repeating, building academic research for the purpose of satisfying John Doe is not the right approach. Research is, to quote Faheem Hussain,”unfortunately an elite activity” (http://sse.lums.edu.pk/documents/opednewsletter2005Jun.pdf). Either we agree with it and embrace it wholeheartedly or we risk muddling along with a system that will underachieve in every aspect.
Yes, I agree that nobody should be *forced* to do locally relevant research. However, in two core ways, around the world, a concept akin to ‘local relevance’ is considered: First, reviewers while weighing a number of factors in their decision to award or discard a proposal, consider it’s potential for broad impact in society. In the US, this is true for national agencies like NSF and NIH at one end, all the way to DoD related agencies like DARPA, ARO, ONR, and AFRL. Second, program directors, once again spanning the spectrum of agencies, while deciding where funding should be allocated, strongly consider national priorities.
I disagree with Sohail’s implication that ensuring broad societal impact should be shelved until capacity is reached.
Where I whole-heartedly agree with you is that if a proposal has excellent intellectual merit and does not demonstrate any practical significance, it should also be able to find money. Even in a narrow, self-serving way, quality ‘irrelevant’ research coming out of Pakistan will help the scientific brand of Pakistan.
You wrote an excellent article but it is my humble request to youto come back to Pakistan and server here that is how we all can raise the standard of research and education in our country. Many Pakistani go abroad and never come back.
I plan to return in July 2010, inshAllah.
Excellent.
I’d rather agree with you on that: Research purposes should be broader and not just outcome evaluation based.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a program which is sort of a marriage between what Sohaib advocated in his piece (mentoring and ‘nudging’ researchers toward locally-relevant research) and what Affan is suggesting in this piece. It is called the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) program.
Under this program, DARPA selects approximately 30 non-tenured faculty members (‘rising stars’, if you will) and provides them with a two-year, $300,000 research grant (which, if I’m not mistaken, is in the same ballpark as a typical NSF grant amount). But, that’s not all. The program also comes with significant networking opportunities.
Here’s how the objective of the program was described in a recent press release about the latest awards:
“The objective of the DARPA YFA program is to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions in academia and expose them to Department of Defense (DoD) needs and DARPA’s program development process. The YFA program provides funding, mentoring, and industry and DoD contacts to these faculty early in their careers to develop their research ideas in the context of DoD needs. DARPA’s long term goal for this program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in key disciplines who will focus a significant portion of their career on DoD and National Security issues.”
The program has a fairly elaborate review process but it’s main attraction to researchers is the fact that at least some of the proposals funded through this program are picked up for multi-year, multi-million dollar funding iniatives by DARPA and other agencies.
In fairness to our funding agencies, I think ideas like this can only be realized in a mature research community. The ad-hocness of our current structure is less by design than due to the small size and inexperience of our academic research community as a whole.
DARPA has a young faculty program, and all the other DoD funders have them too: ONR, ARO, and AFRL — they are usually one of the few programs restricted to US citizens. These are in the same ballpark as an NSF CAREER award, but smaller than the average NSF grant.
As these grants are targetting unestablished faculty, they are more risky, but compared to the NSF CAREER they have to be heavily contextualized within the DoD research universe. Taking the liberty to speak for them, I believe the NSF award is closer to what Affan has in mind, and these programs are much closer to what Sohaib had in mind.
On the same topic, I think interested people should read this new book that I recently came across (possibly because it was published in 2010).
http://www.amazon.com/Great-American-University-Preeminence-Indispensable/dp/1586484087
It is a good article and addresses the aspects of developing academic and research culture in the Pakistan Universities. The underlying reasons given by the author are providing the young aspirant graduates with attractive salaries, research funds and academic freedom for doing a research in the field of their expertise and choice. Some additonal points are forwarded.
One could be in the form of a monetary fund set up and nourished by contributions from industries. A percentage deduction must be made obligatory for industries to pay, and they are to be compensated in the form of tax incentives given to them.
Second, the universities must also try invovle industry expertise by hiring industry advisors on a term-based appointmnet, and they are to be invited to the univerities regular meeting of their academic bodies called for the purpose of curriculum design and devlopment.
Third, the universities have to regularise and formalise setting up a regime of international and national curriculum eximners in such a way that it ultimately leads to becoming a routine type bienneial or tetra-eneial business. It would be very much contributive if a faculty member from the NED University in Karachi visits the NWFP UET in Peshawar as an examiner to ultimately furnish the host university with his/er suggestions on how teach, set up qustion papers, conduct exams, offer and evaluate the undergraduate projects.
Equally or more instrumental in the curriculum development would be similar views/suggestions by an international exminer invited not necessarily from wetern countries but also from from Eastern, South Asian or Asia Pacific countries.
Sheroz Khan
STEP FORWARD
Affan’s commentary on research is well thought out and welcome in this forum. But it is important that as a first step well-intentioned Pakistanis should not fixate only on US models of research; they should seek out more relevant models from countries closer to Pakistan in development, because these may be more relevant.
I point to the publications from the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), founded in Italy by the great Abdus Salam (http://twas.ictp.it). The Academy is a collection of first-rate highly successful researchers in science and engineering from South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America, many of whom have surmounted the challenges of doing research in inhospitable intellectual milieus. Read the success stories of both individuals and institutions in the archive of TWAS newsletters. I believe readers of STEP will find much to emulate and learn from there. Some of the scientists and educators working in TWAS’ member countries truly inspire by what they have accomplished.
Dear Syed Your plan is not applicable in universities of developing countries like Pakistan . They are controlled by illiterate and corrupt politicians