STEP – Science, Technology, and Education in Pakistan

In a country where a quarter of the population lives under the poverty line, and millions of children who should be enlightening themselves with knowledge spend their childhood working in shabby workshops, it’s not surprising that people aspire to improve the condition of the country or their particular surroundings. One such example is Project Topi, a student-run organization that works for the uplift of the remote village of Topi where Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (GIKI) is situated. The organization is independently run by the students of GIKI, with Dr. Tariq Saeed as the faculty adviser. Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Shaukhat Hammed Khan is the Executive Director of Society for the Promotion of Engineering Sciences and Technology in Pakistan (SOPREST), the parent body of GIK Institute. A nuclear physicist by training, he recently served as the Rector of GIKI and member of the Planning Commission. In Part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Khan we talk about GIKI — its vision and its future, his work on lasers and much more. Part 1 of our conversation is here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Very few scientists are able to successfully navigate the road between a research lab, academic administration, and the government. Shaukhat Hameed Khan is certainly one scientist who has. An Oxford-trained nuclear physicist, Dr. Khan started the first group working on lasers at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in 1969. During the proceeding four decades, he contributed to the nation’s nuclear program, served as the Rector of Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, and as a member of the Planning Commission. Dr. Khan now serves as the Executive Director of Society for the Promotion of Engineering Sciences and Technology in Pakistan (SOPREST), the parent body of GIK Institute. In this two-part interview, we talk about higher education, HEC, GIKI and much more.

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.

Editor’s Note: A general discussion page on the GRE requirement introduced by the HEC exists here.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is heavily influenced by Paul Lockhart’s brilliant article, ‘A mathematician’s lament’. I only hope to add my experiences as a Pakistani student to back his stance in the debate over Mathematics Education.

Throughout my life I have hated mathematics with a passion. I hated its rules and notations. I hated the fact that I had absolutely no say in whatever was going on in the class. I just had to sit there and listen to my math teacher go on and on about formulas, notations needed to write these formulas, practice questions which would help us memorize these formulas and eventually “practical problems” which were supposed to exhibit the relevance of these formulas in everyday life although even the eight year-old me could tell that these were merely the same practice questions loosely disguised in the most unlikely of social situations known to man. And frankly, I didn’t care. I didn’t care where x was, or how much older Mary was than her brother Mark or when train A would reach London. As far as I was concerned math was an obsolete science to which I didn’t want to contribute to and which, for the most part, didn’t really want me to contribute to it anyway.

Therefore it comes as a surprise to many people that I am currently a Computer Science major focusing on theoretical computer science, which is basically a branch of mathematics. I, who had once famously given a speech to my seventh-grade math class about the pointlessness of mathematics, am now the one trying to explain to other people the beauty of Erdos’ brilliant proofs. And it all started with the following beautiful proof of the infinity of prime numbers:

For any finite set  {p_1,p₂…p_r} of primes consider the number n= p_1..p_2..p₃…p_r +1. This n has a prime divisor p but this is not one of the {p_1,p₂…p_r}, otherwise p would be a divisor of n and the product  p_1..p_2..p₃…p_{r ,} and thus also of the difference n-( p_1..p_2..p₃…p_r) =1, which is impossible.  So a finite set {p_1,p₂…p_r} cannot be the collection of all prime numbers.

I first heard of this proof in the first lecture of a discrete mathematics course I took during my sophomore year at university. The instructor didn’t even write the proof down, with all its messy set notation. He just told us about the idea of putting the prime numbers together in a group and showed us what goes wrong if we assume the group to be finite. At first I thought this was one of those introductory shenanigans professors deploy in the first class to get students interested. How could something so simple be counted as math? Where were the fancy symbols and the list of variables with their definitions? Where was the list of steps used to reach the conclusion? Where were the ten similar questions I needed to solve at home for practice? This was simply a clever idea used to solve a problem. Surely, this couldn’t be math! But, as I have learnt in the past year, this is basically what math is: a set of simple ideas used to solve problems. Sometimes the problems can be simplified to older problems for which people have already come up with solutions. Sometimes ideas which have been used to solve a certain problem can be used to solve an unrelated problem. But the simplicity of the process remains intact. It is the ‘idea’ which is at the heart of all mathematics, and to come up with ideas you just need creativity (and maybe a pencil and a notebook).

If a course can change the path of a person’s life, then this discrete math course changed mine. In the course of nine weeks, I was introduced to the kind of math I hadn’t even known existed. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel like a robot while doing math. I actually had to think about the problems and figure out strategies for solving them. While I was introduced to techniques like induction and graph theory, for the most part my assignments and exams required me to come up with my own strategies based on these techniques and my own logical arguments and common sense. Math was like an elaborate game and finally I felt like it actually wanted me to take part.

So, this brings us to the central question: why did I, and countless other students, hate elementary and high school math? What needs to be done to make mathematics more interesting to students? Although I do not have any experience teaching mathematics, I do remember the reasons why I hated it so much and know exactly what eventually made me realize that I wanted to study a branch of mathematics as my major. For the sake of this article, I am going to ignore factors which affect all subjects alike and focus on why math has become such a hated subject.

Looking back at my years of struggling with high school math the first word that comes to mind is boredom. And this was not caused by a lack of interest in school because I was generally a very enthusiastic kid. I loved studying languages, history, and science. It was just math that I dreaded. And looking back at the way math is taught it comes as no surprise. While all other subjects are taught as an amalgamation of the history, foundations, rules and applications of the subject, math is mainly limited to the rules of the subject. Take a typical sixth grade science class. I remember learning about the effect of different factors on the rate of evaporation by placing different shaped beakers filled with water all over the school campus. What followed was a memorable class in which we all had mock “evaporation races” as we timed the beakers to see which one would lose its water first.It was only once we had made our own conclusions about which factors affected evaporation, that our teacher explained Brownian motion to us. She also mentioned factors such as surface area and wind-speed, which most of us had been able  to conclude for ourselves based on the observations we had made.

Now compare this to a typical sixth grade math class. Looking back, sixth grade was when some of the most wonderful mathematical concepts were introduced to us. It was in the sixth grade that we first encountered the idea of a variable and started to really analyze shapes. Statistics was introduced, and we started manipulating probabilities to get results which even now give me the feeling of being able to predict the future. But in the midst of all these amazing ideas, this is how a typical math class would go:

Teacher: An isosceles triangle is a triangle which has two sides of equal length. Okay?

Students: YES!

Teacher: So what is an isosceles triangle?

Students: A TRIANGLE WHICH HAS TWO SIDES OF EQUAL LENGTH !

And you can bet one of the questions on the progress test would be: “What is an isosceles triangle?”. In such a situation who would be interested in math? And these are not just two extreme examples I have mentioned to prove my point. Science that year continued to keep us hooked: we grew plants in inky water, caught insects in jars, experimented with mirrors and discovered the material we were supposed to learn, while in math we moved on to triangles which had no sides of equal length (I honestly don’t remember what they were called, though I think it begins with an s) and other lexical atrocities.

You may argue that science is an extreme example and that math just doesn’t have the exciting material needed to keep students hooked. While science teachers can use models, take their students outside or perform simple experiments to demonstrate their material, math teachers have nothing to interest a group of thirty kids. Not only do I disagree with this, I actually claim that it is the other way round and that it is the math teachers that have it good. While science teachers need extensive (and often non-available) funding to buy lab equipment and take their students out on field trips, all a math teacher needs are thirty pencils and notebooks. And how does he keep them interested? Well, he actually asks them to do some math. Do you remember the puzzle we probably all tried as kids in which we had to draw a house without lifting our pencils. That is just a simple example of a Eulerian path. And those complicated strategies for winning card games that our older siblings tried to explain to us were mostly simple applications of probability. The tower of rings of increasingly small diameters which we had to shift to another peg is the most common example given for recursive algorithms. The list of interesting mathematical problems which we solved willingly as kids is endless. Nim, Hex, magic tricks, and riddles in which we had to find loopholes in logical arguments are all example of the math we enjoyed as children and it is these problems which should be bought to the classroom to make math classes more interesting.

Another issue which I find with the way mathematics is taught, which is closely related to the first, is the extreme and almost exclusive emphasis on the utterly mundane aspects of mathematics. Take the isosceles triangle example above. Would it really have mattered if we had called the triangles, “triangles with two equal sides”? Maybe shortened to TWTES (pronounced tevtes). What’s important are the properties of these triangles. Instead of asking a child to spend time trying to memorize the pronunciation and spelling of this weird word, she should be asked to think about how they are made, and how the angles inside this triangle are related to each other. I am pretty sure if a child made a dozen different TWTES’ she would figure out most of their  properties for herself and she would actually enjoy the mental excursion of discovering these properties instead of hastily be given a list of them in the last fifteen minutes of class.

Admittedly, there are some terms and jargon that a student of mathematics must learn in order for the classes to be held smoothly and for the students to eventually take part in the wider mathematical discourse. But no other subject puts even half of the emphasis that math places on its lexicon. Take the example of chemistry. If a subject has the right to focus on terminology it is chemistry, with it’s multitude of  symbols, chemical formulas and specific reactions. But not once do I remember a chemistry teacher reciting the names of the elements along with their atomic symbols. Instead, we focused on the elements and their reactions and any time we needed help deciphering a symbol we could simply look it up on the huge periodic table taped to the classroom wall. Maybe that is what mathematics needs: a periodic table of shapes and functions which would be taped to the wall of every classroom. Then, children all over the world could forget about mathematical terminology and actually do some math.

And by ‘doing math’ I don’t mean the mindless repetition, or solving exercise problems at the end of every chapter. As a result of school mathematics, most people end up believing math is the application of known rules to problems that we know the rules can solve. That is the job of an accountant or a cashier or an insurance planner. A mathematicians  job is much simpler. He must come up with the rules that other people are to use. When faced with a problem, he is not told that it can be solved using the second trigonometric identity; that is what he must figure out. And while this is harder than simply applying a set of rules, the result of coming up with a solution is infinitely more rewarding. You can compare the two as the difference between the joy a child feels in having an adult place him on a bike and push him along, and the joy he feels when he races through the park himself. It is hard to teach him how to ride and it might take him ages to learn but all parents understand that the end result is worth it. Math teachers should definitely do the same with their students.

And if difficulty was such a major barrier, why doesn’t it stop teachers of other subjects from trying to get their students to appreciate the beauty of their fields? By the end of high school most of us have faced the toughest aspects of most of the other subjects. We have read Iqbal’s poetry and critiqued it with our peers. We have a deep understanding of how the major systems of the body work. We have built electrical devices and have made original pieces of art in a range of different mediums. Then, why is it that most of us only experience the joy of coming up with a true mathematical proof well into our undergraduate programs? Surely there is something wrong going on here.

“Kabhi kabhi to humaray zayhen main aisay khayal aata hay keh agar Zardari ki baytee Swat main parhti to shaid school bund hee nahein hotay”. Read the rest of this entry »

“Love thy neighbor” is how the saying goes, but words don’t always reflect reality. While the intense rivalry between India and Pakistan is not new, the World Trade Center event in September 2001 and its aftermath have left Pakistan in an unfamiliar and delicate relationship with its neighbor Afghanistan. The ongoing war and recent surge in NATO troops in Afghanistan, several suicide bombings in Pakistan, and the Bombay attacks in India last year have all but alienated not only the three countries of South Asia but also the United States.

Dreamfly hopes to bridge this gap by connecting children in the schools and community centers it funds and operates in the region.

“Kids in these countries grow up hating people from other countries in the region”, said Umaimah Mendhro, a recent graduate of Harvard Business School and one of the co-founders of Dreamfly. Umaimah has roots in Akri – a small village in Sindh, Pakistan – where Dreamfly built its first school. “Kids of Akri can’t even spell Harvard”, continued Umaimah, “and I want to make sure that the opportunities that enabled me to pursue higher education in the US are available to these kids as well”. Mona Akmal, the other co-founder of Dreamfly, believes she enjoys the life she has because of the opportunities provided to her by the education she received. Referring to the opportunities available to her, she said: “If you level the playing field, amazing things can happen”.

Mona and Umaimah joined hands two years ago to start Dreamfly with the bold aim of providing first-class education to children, in areas such as Akri where there are either no schools or no substantial resources for schools that might exist. Dreamfly chooses the location of a school (or a community center), raises funds, and designs its program (curriculum, summer camp etc.), and partners with local organizations (such as The Citizens Foundation in Pakistan, and Rubia in Afghanistan) to run day to day operations.

Dreamfly aspires to create an environment where kids dare to dream. While educating children remains at the core of its ambitions, what’s really striking about Dreamfly’s approach is its aim to bridge the gap between countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and the US.

Here are some of the elements of Dreamfly’s projects.

Providing role models to the children. Dreamfly aims at building a strong bond between sponsors (most of whom are in the United States) and kids. The idea is to provide role models to students and to keep the community and sponsors involved in the growth of the children. For example, half way across the world in the United States, at events aptly called Dreamwall Pakistan and Dreamwall Afghanistan, attendees shared pictures of personal significance and wrote messages directly addressed to the children. In return, each student shared his or her name, age, and a dream. Students also shared their pictures taken using digital cameras provided to them by Dreamfly.

Connecting with sister schools. Dreamfly is working on establishing a sister relationship between its first school in Akri and a school in Seattle. Also, the curriculum in Dreamfly schools in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India is designed to keep students in touch with students in the neighboring countries. This, in the long term, will play a part in reducing tension between these countries – one school at a time.

Providing computers and technology. Most of the schools in rural Pakistan do not have any computers. But the school in Akri has a computer lab and is aimed at addressing three problems at once.

1. Computer programs and videos such as Sesame Street are used to educate children and help them learn things in a more intuitive and fun way.
2. Computers provide a means to help children learn about technology itself, by learning how to program or how to use Office software and other tools.
3. Computers serve a big part of Dreamfly’s mission: bridging the gap. Students learn how to use email to stay in touch with their peers and sponsors. Moreover, Mona and Umaimah are designing curriculum in a way such that students can use social networking tools (such as Facebook) to stay in touch. This is still work in progress, as they want to ensure that social networking tools are used in a way that does not hinder their education.

While kids pursue their dreams in Dreamfly schools, their sponsors will stay updated with the impact of their donations. Similarly, the children will get to know more about their peers and role models in the US and other countries. It’s hard not to see why this will help bring these kids together and pave the way for strong relationships between these, sometimes very alienated, countries.

Saad Fazil does freelance writing for VentureBeat, where he focuses on deep analysis of emerging trends in the industry. He is the founder of Whizner Consulting, a technology strategy consulting firm. Prior to consulting, he held business analyst, product management, and sales consultant positions at Kayak.com, Oracle, and Alcatel. He received his MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. He blogs at IT Valley and tweets at @sfrocks.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.

What is the crucial quality important for succeeding in graduate school? I will provide a few examples that suggest that: i) The answer is not intelligence — a minimum of intelligence, such as what everyone reading this article has, is sufficient for succeeding in any graduate school, ii) it is … hard work. I apologize for the disappointment.

Here is what some of the great mathematicians, after having done work considered the very peak of human thought, think about the factors in their success:

Grothendieck, Fields Medalist 1966: “Since then I’ve had the chance, in the world of mathematics that bid me welcome, to meet quite a number of people, both among my “elders” and among young people in my general age group, who were much more brilliant, much more “gifted” than I was. I admired the facility with which they picked up, as if at play, new ideas, juggling them as if familiar with them from the cradle — while for myself I felt clumsy, even oafish, wandering painfully up an arduous track, like a dumb ox faced with an amorphous mountain of things that I had to learn (so I was assured), things I felt incapable of understanding the essentials or following through to the end. Indeed, there was little about me that identified the kind of bright student who wins at prestigious competitions or assimilates, almost by sleight of hand, the most forbidding subjects.”

Gauss: “If others would but reflect on mathematical truths as deeply and as continuously as I have, they would make my discoveries.”

The reason why I give credence to these remarks is that, while both Grothendieck and Gauss were considered amazing geniuses by their contemporaries, neither was known for being modest. (Grothendieck said: “In the history of mathematics, I have produced the greatest number of new ideas”, and Gauss was famous for putting down other mathematicians.) This, together with the fact that even at graduate schools in the US which attract the best and the brightest of students, the drop-out in computer science is over 50%, should suggest that other factors play a larger role in determining success or failure. In my opinion, a rather large reason for failure is the following, rather fragile, learning psychology.

In the current environment, everyone wants to be smart, or at any rate, appear smart. This severely interferes with learning, naturally: students who consider being smart important become more conservative in the length and hardness of problems they attempt, which is a reasonable risk-averse way of preserving their image. This approach works for undergraduates, especially under the diseased quarter system since the material covered is relatively shallow and easy. However, once one starts graduate studies and begins to think about problems where it is not even clear if a solution is possible, the habit of following the risk-averse strategy just doesn’t cut it.

Students not used to prolonged thinking on a single problem start off well. However, soon they find motivation and inspiration leaving them, and they start dreading working on the problem as failure would lead them to question something they (by now) crucially identify with: “smartness”. Procrastination kicks in, and soon the student is busy in a diverse set of academic (but non-research!) activities to hide the reality of not working, like writing complicated scripts to automate their soon-to-be-coming publication phase, optimizing their daily vitamin B12 intake, getting heavily involved with political and religious movements and so on. Few students are able to critically introspect, which is reasonable since society has informed them that smartness is what matters, and if they are unable to solve the problem quickly, the logical conclusion is that they are not smart. In this world-view, it is hard to even consider the suggestion that smartness matters fairly little in such matters and most fall prey to heavy depression. Some do manage to climb out: Feynman, physics Nobel Prize 1964, had developed a reputation for being an extremely smart guy at Los Alamos. He paid for this afterwards as an assistant professor at Cornell, where for the first two years he was paralyzed by this fear, and unable to do any worthwhile work. During this time, he received an invitation to join the prestigious Institute for Advanced Studies (where Einstein was one of the members) but refused since he felt useless as a researcher. Fortunately for science, later a positive reaction set in for  him and he was able to overcome his fear (and later ended up writing  books with titles “What Do You Care What Other People Think’”).

Instead of intelligence, persistence is the crucial parameter for success in graduate school:

Gowers, Fields Medalist 1998: “To illustrate with an extreme example, Andrew Wiles, who (at the age of over 40) proved Fermat’s Last Theorem … and thereby solved the worlds most famous unsolved mathematical problem is undoubtedly very clever, but he is not a genius in my sense. How, you might ask, could he possibly have done what he did without some sort of mysterious extra brainpower? The answer is that, remarkable though his achievement was, it is not so remarkable as to defy explanation. I do not know precisely what enabled him to succeed, but he would have needed a great deal of courage, determination, and patience, a wide knowledge of some very difficult work done by others, the good fortune to be in the right mathematical area at the right time, and an exceptional strategic ability.

This last quality is, ultimately, more important than freakish mental speed: the most profound contributions to mathematics are often made by tortoises rather than hares. As mathematicians develop, they learn various tricks of the trade, partly from the work of other mathematicians and partly as a result of many hours spent thinking about mathematics. What determines whether they can use their expertise to solve notorious problems is, in large measure, a matter of careful planning: attempting problems that are likely to be fruitful, knowing when to give up a line of thought (a difficult judgment to make), being able to sketch broad outlines of arguments before, just occasionally, managing to fill in the details. This demands a level of maturity, which is by no means incompatible with genius, but which does not always accompany it.” [Excerpted
from  the excellent book "A Short Introduction to Mathematics"].

Though not directly related to research, the phenomenon that is Judit Polgar provides another fascinating insight into the reasons behind spectacular success in intellectual activities:

“Forty years ago, Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian psychologist, conducted an epistolary courtship with a Ukrainian foreign language teacher named Klara. His letters to her weren’t filled with reflections on her cherubic beauty or vows of eternal love. Instead, they detailed a pedagogical experiment he was bent on carrying out with his future progeny. After studying the biographies of hundreds of great intellectuals, he had identified a common theme — early and intensive specialization in a particular subject. Laszlo [sic] believed he could turn any healthy child into a prodigy. He had already published a book on the subject, Bring Up Genius!, and he needed a wife willing to jump on board.” [Psychology Today]

The result were three sisters: Susan, Sofia, and Judit. Judit is by far the best female chess player in history, and ranked in the top-10 chess players in the world. Susan is the next(!) best female chess player in history. Sofia has a record-breaking performance in Italy  that has become known as the “Sac of Rome”.

“Anders Ericsson is only vaguely familiar with the Polgars, but he has spent over 20 years building evidence in support of Laszlo’s theory of genius. Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, argues that ‘extended deliberate practice’ is the true, if banal, key to success. ‘Nothing shows that innate factors are a necessary prerequisite for expert level mastery in most fields,’ he says … His interviews with 78 German pianists and violinists revealed that by age 20, the best had spent an estimated 10,000 hours practicing, on average 5,000 hours more than a less accomplished group. Unless you’re dealing with a cosmic anomaly like Mozart, he argues, an enormous amount of hard work is what makes a prodigy’s performance look so effortless. ‘My father believes that innate talent is nothing, that [success] is 99 percent hard work,’ Susan says. ‘I agree with him.‘ “

The effect of psychology on learning is illustrated nicely in an interesting recent experiment: A group of researchers led by Carol Dweck of Columbia University went to a very competitive school’s 5th grade class, and randomly split it into two groups. Both groups were given the same easy puzzles to solve, and the performance of each child noted. Both groups scored well. After the exam, the first group was told ‘you must have really worked hard’, while the second group of children were rewarded by saying  ‘you must be smart at this‘. For the second round, both groups were given the same choice: either take another easy exam, or a much harder exam.  Here’s the punchline: over 90% of students in the first group chose the harder exam, while the majority of children in the second group chose the easier exam. In the third round, everyone had to do the harder exam:

Dweck:  “When we praise children for their intelligence, we tell them that this is the name of the game: Look smart, don’t risk making mistakes … [In the third round, children in first group] got very involved, willing to try every solution to the puzzles … Many of them remarked, unprovoked “This is my favorite test” [while for the students in second group] you could see the strain. They were sweating and miserable.”

The NYMag article ends with the following sage advice, on which I’ll also end: “The brain is ultimately just a muscle. Make it stronger by working it out.”

Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.

While security remains the biggest concern for Pakistani citizens, there are those who believe that education is the best way to ensure security in the future. Bringing education to the masses is no easy task, especially when parents cannot afford education for their children, and would understandably prefer their kids to make money by looming carpets for example. Business and Life Skills School (BLISS) wants to solve this “either school or work” problem. Read the rest of this entry »

A 1997 study of data from the University of Delaware found that across a wide range of universities in the US “education programs were funded below the institutional average for all disciplines” and at the more prestigious research universities “education programs were less well-funded than other professional programs, with the exception of social work and accounting”. The idea that quality teachers cannot be prepared “on the cheap” is getting a renewed look and gaining significant traction in the US and there might be important lessons for Pakistan to learn from this discussion.  Read the rest of this entry »

The second talk of the STEP Lecture Series will be given by Dr. Sonesh Surana on November 12, 2009 at 8:30pm PST. The talk has been organized in collaboration with LUMS Department of Computer Science, NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), and Air University, and will be streamed live. A brief Q&A session will follow the talk. The talk will be aimed at a general audience. Undergraduate and graduate students with non-engineering backgrounds are also encouraged to attend.

Title: Enabling Sustainable Rural Wireless Telemedicine

Where: LUMS Department of Computer Science, Auditorium A-16, NUST SEECS, Air University
When: November 12, 8:30pm Pakistan Standard Time (7:30am Pacific daylight time)

Abstract:
With one ophthalmologist per over 100,000 people in India, there is a critical need to improve the utilization of eye doctors. In this talk, we discuss our work in deploying a long distance wireless network that enables high quality video-based telemedicine between rural eye clinics and centrally located doctors at the Aravind Eye Hospitals. In particular, we take a close look at the issues of financial and operational sustainability.

Bio:
Dr. Sonesh Surana focuses on the design and implementation of low-cost information and communication technologies (ICT) and related power infrastructure for developing regions. He received his PhD in Computer Science with the TIER research group at UC Berkeley in 2009. As part of TIER, he co-developed new WiFi-based long-distance technology enabling inexpensive targeted rural broadband coverage, and demonstrated high bandwidth point-to-point links as long as 380 Kms, a new world record. He also led the deployment of this technology for a live video-based rural telemedicine network at the Aravind Eye Hospital in South India, managing a range of non-profit, government, university and private stakeholders. This network, now financially and operationally sustainable, provides coverage to 500,000 people in areas with no other option for eye care. It has enabled over 100,000 remote patient examinations in three years, and 20,000 of those patients have received their sight back due to early diagnosis. He has done ICT work in Romania, Rwanda, India and Venezuela. He advises several non-profit development organizations and is also the co-founder of QVSense Inc, a company focused on building photovoltaic power management hardware solutions.

Acknowledgments: STEP is very grateful to Dr. Shahab Baqai at LUMS for his continued support and help in organizing the lecture series. Special thanks to Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) for facilitating the video broadcast of this talk.

Correction: An earlier version of this post mistakenly posted the time for the talk as 7:30PM Pakistan Standard Time. The correct time for the talk in Pakistan is 8:30PM.

Image credits: http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/06/06_telemedicine.shtml

In this article, I make the case that grade I-XII textbooks, prescribed by the provincial and federal textbook boards, should be made available on the Internet for free. I discuss the reasons why this is necessary and the benefits that will accrue from such an effort.

Outdated and Incorrect Curriculum

In a household survey conducted by Gallup Pakistan in May 2009, 70% of the respondents said that they send their children to government-run schools. These schools are often faulted for imparting incomplete, incorrect, and rot education to children. The school textbooks prescribed by the provincial and federal textbook boards are part of the problem. The description of the relevant material in science and math textbooks is at times inadequate whereas the social sciences, religious, and Pakistan studies textbooks have been used by the successive governments to further their political agendas.

Making textbooks available online will allow educational experts both inside and outside Pakistan to easily scrutinize their content for clarity, correctness, and completeness. The feedback received from educational experts will greatly help to improve the quality of these textbooks. Read the rest of this entry »

Nature’s recent article on higher education in Pakistan has re-ignited the debate on higher education reform, evoking strong responses from both supporters and critics of the HEC. Recently, we interviewed the lead author Dr. Athar Osama, to learn more about his wider conclusions, and his response to some of the criticisms of the methodology used in the Nature article.

To seed this discussion, we present commentary from Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy and Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman. Dr. Hoodbhoy presents his opposing point of view, arguing that the measures presented in the article were inadequate, and further that the conclusions drawn from the metrics were flawed. Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman, founding (and former) chairman of the HEC, who led the higher education reform effort during his tenure, responds by pointing to data that, in his view, shows the depth and breadth of the reform’s success.

We invite our readers to contribute their thoughts on what metrics are appropriate for measuring the success of higher education within the context of Pakistan.

NOTE: Both commentators have significantly shaped the landscape of Pakistani education over the last few decades. We request our discussants to avoid personalizing the discussion and to maintain a civil and constructive tone.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy has reproduced his email but not my subsequent response to it.

There are four aspects of the comments of Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy that need to be considered:

1. Firstly, Dr. Hoodbhoy himself admits that there has been a huge increase in international publications at QAU after HEC came into existence when he mentions the number of international publications in the two time periods. Strangely, he picks a six year period, 1998-2003, and then compares it with the subsequent 4.5 years (?) , 2004 to mid 2008, (the correspondence occurred in August 2008, so he could not possibly have had access to the figures for the entire year) I can only assume that he has mentioned 2003 by mistake in the second “5 year” period as there is no reason to include the publications of the year 2003 in both time periods, which he has done. It is clearly unfair to take two time periods of different durations and compare them.

Read the rest of this entry »