Created in the Fall 2000 as a group of just a few to help the needy students of Topi, Project Topi now comprises of more than fifty volunteer members. In the past ten years, Project Topi has expanded itself from a helper of the people of Topi to one of the larger student-run welfare societies in Pakistani universities. We have worked on several projects at the provincial and national level, thus extending our horizons beyond Topi.

Project Topi organizes several events throughout the academic year. Despite other activities of the organization, our main focus remains on helping the students of Topi village. We host a call for volunteers every year, and those who volunteer give an hour of  free tutoring to the students in Topi schools, including the Topi High School, Hamlet High School and GIKI School. Several deserving students are also given financial aids and scholarships each year to help them complete their education.

As is the case with the most of the underdeveloped villages in Pakistan, Topi also has inadequate health care facilities. A majority of the villagers are financially weak and cannot afford even basic life saving drugs and treatments.  Project Topi has been actively participating in providing health care to the people in the region by organizing Blood Donation Camps and Free Medical Camps in collaboration with reputed NGOs, such as Jamila Sultana Foundation, Pakistan Red Crescent Society, Fatimid Foundation, and Al-Khidmat Foundation. On several occasions, Project Topic has also raised funds to help pay medical bills for workers and staff members of the Institute and their families.

Project Topi has worked tirelessly during nationwide disasters, such as the Earth Quake of October 2005, the thought of which still makes us shiver, and the massive outflow of Internally Displaced People of Swat. Last year when the unfortunate floods swept through the country causing catastrophic loss of property and life, Project Topi stood up to the challenge despite meager resources at its disposal. With the help of Drs. Tariq Saeed and Siraj ul Haq, faculty members at the GIK Institute, several relief camps were organized in the affected areas. To raise funds for these camps, members of Project Topi team went door to door to students, faculty members, and alumni of GIKI, and their own families and friends. Within a few weeks, we raised around 1 million Rupees. With these funds, and other donations received by Project Topi in the form of clothes, cash, medicine, food and stationary items, the organization started relief work in Charsadda district of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa. Food items such as flour, oil, sugar, tea, and clean drinking water were provided to over two hundred families living in the relief camps around Charsadda.  In addition, around one thousand school bags with stationary items and books were distributed among the children of the area so they could resume their academic activities. A medical camp was also organized with the help of GIKI’s medical team at a village near Charsadda. Sewn clothes, small gifts and little cash envelopes were also distributed among several families as eidi on the occasion of Eid.

Believing in the principle of teaching people how to catch fish rather than just providing it, following the devastating floods, Project Topi helped several small businessmen, shopkeepers and other daily-wagers to resume their business activities and start supporting their families again. A group comprising of electricians, a taxi driver, a milkman, a crockery store owner, and a fruit-seller was among the many helped through a micro-finance scheme. This was a joint effort of Project Topi and software consultancy firm Enablistic.

Project Topi will continue to work to provide development assistance, health care and education to the people in and around GIK Institute. It is true that one should not flaunt and brag about helping the needy. But, it is also important to let people inside and outside of GIKI know about the efforts that members of Project Topi are making in order to revive the sense of helping others. Our hope is that our efforts to provide opportunities to the people of the under-developed area around our Institute will inspire others to do the same in their communities.

To learn more and stay updated on the activities of Project Topi, email us at projecttopi@giki.edu.pk or follow us on Facebook.

Kaleem Ahmed is a undergraduate Senior at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, majoring in Computer Science (Software Engineering). He is also the outgoing General Secretary of Project Topi. If you would like to spread the word about your student organization involved in philanthropic work in Pakistan, please email us at editors@nextstepforward.net.

When did your involvement with GIK Institute start? What was the vision for GIKI and, after 17 years, is GIKI where you envisioned it to be?

I was among the people, including several foreign professors, invited by then-President Ghulam Ishaq Khan — around 1989-90 — for  brainstorming sessions about the proposed Institute. The idea of starting a private university in science and engineering was quite novel [at the time] for Pakistan, and it was meant to be an instrument for breaking out of the mediocrity trap gripping Pakistan’s other engineering Universities.

My dream was for GIKI to become a community of self-governing scholars, a place where reason and innovation would rule and where the only thing that matters – the quality of student emerging from it – would be at the center of all our efforts.  These graduates would also be proficient in their work and aware of their own cultural heritage as well as those of other people, and  imbued with the processes of (mathematical) reasoning. This dream is yet incomplete as it requires civilizing the engineers and scientists also!

What are the obstacles to achieving this vision?

The reasons go back to the founding of the Institute. [At the time of its founding] I disagreed with Topi as the site, and preferred an urban setting near Nowshera, on the main highway and close to a strong industrial cluster, since it was going to be set up in the then-NWFP (now re-named as Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa). President Ghulam Ishaq Khan may have been persuaded by his close associations with WAPDA to set it up next to Tarbela Dam, but this decision has been the fatal flaw holding back GIKI from reaching its true potential. It hardly mattered in the years before HEC started injecting funds into the higher education sector but now it is critical, as GIKI has little access to public funds. My fear is that GIKI will price itself out of the market.

My other recommendation was also not followed in letter and spirit. I had done my undergraduate from Oxford (its engineering department was called the Engineering Sciences Dept .), and remembered it as a program which enabled one to go into manufacturing, or research, or business [after graduation]. It stressed the blurring of boundaries between engineering and physical sciences. GIKI’s name does have the words “Engineering Sciences” in it, and there is a faculty of Engineering Sciences, but it is not really in the same spirit of the 100-year old model at Oxford, where every student had to take all subjects (electronics and electrical engineering, computers, heat engines and thermodynamics, mechanical and other civil structures, fluid flows), and then take 3-4 additional advanced courses [in the area of his or her specialization].

When were you brought on-board as the Rector, and when and why did you leave?

I was asked and agreed to become the Rector in June 2008 to but left in January 2009 for one major reason. The Taliban fell in love with me and accused me in a letter in November 2008 of spreading immorality and organizing mehfils of ‘raqs-o-saroor‘, apart from espousing the ideas of the Americans and the Jews, etc., etc. Also, I am quite an independent person, one who has made his own decisions, and it riled me that their shoora had decided to ‘send me to jahannum’ without asking me first!

My focus was always the well-being of the students and to see that they got their money’s worth. I interacted with faculty and students intensively to improve the delivery of education. I also pulled up the administration for their general apathy. I insisted on hygiene and cleanliness in the hostels and dining halls, started improving their sports facilities, and offered to arrange proper music lessons. I encouraged them to patronize local Swabi talent rather relying on relatively expensive pop concerts. I also asked them to be irreverent — to avoid obscurantist dogmas by questioning assumptions, and to remember that no mullah is remembered in Muslim history, while scholars such as Ibn Khaldun and Bu Ali Sina are honoured.  Imagine my frustration at not being able to have even a discussion with the Taliban!

The students were my first concern and without raising alarms, I brought this [letter from the Taliban's shoora] to the notice of the Federal Interior Ministry, which helped to increase police patrolling on the two major roads to Islamabad and Peshawar to prevent any harm to the students. My family came to know only in Jan 2009 and were quite hysterical. So, I decided to quit. Remember, Swat was only an hour away and the military operation against the Taliban did not start for another 10 weeks. There was also the strange case related to the revival of the hair cutting saloon on the campus for female students and faculty wives. This was opposed by a couple of senior (!) faculty wives as being un-Islamic. Incidentally this facility is doing very well.

But, you’re still associated with the Institute (as the Executive Director of SOPREST). What are you working on now?

After the sad demise of Mr. H.U. Baig, I was asked in March 2010 to take over as Executive Director of SOPREST, the society which runs GIKI. I have done so on the understanding that we will be working towards setting up three new Schools of Business, Public Policy, and the Social Sciences in Islamabad under the SOPREST banner.  I am happy to report that the BoG of SOPREST approved this program on its meeting of 17th September.

This new campus is expected to have some 2500 students in place in 10 years. It will provide an integrated approach to business, management, public policy, and simulations and modeling of issues pertaining to problems peculiar to this century, such as security and affordability of energy, water and food. We have requested 50 acres from CDA near Rawal Dam, while a partnership is possible with another Foundation on a 300 acre site near DHA/Bahria.

The support of GIKI alumni will be extremely critical in making this a success. Our alumni  have made a name for themselves, in Pakistan and abroad, and I request them all to support us with suggestions and networking for acquiring talented faculty and, of course, donations. Their advice and experience will be extremely valuable for making GIKI a true University. Our target is to raise some 50 % of the Rs 1.2 billion we will be spending on the venture in the next 5 years. We intend to manage the remainder amount.

A final question about GIKI. Your son was a student at GIKI back in the 90s. If you had the option of sending your son to GIKI now, would you still send him there or to another institute?

[Laughter]. I will probably send him [to GIKI]. It is still one of the best places for engineering in Pakistan.

Moving away from GIKI/SOPREST… You did some pioneering work on lasers in Pakistan, work that can be an example for scientists returning to Pakistan. How did it all start, what did you accomplish and do you see a bright future for the work you started?

It was really exciting! I started as a one-man laser group in 1969 but gradually we developed a very good team. We all complemented one another and we all gave generously of our time.

We built lasers, we used them, and we generated over five billion rupees of revenue through product development over 20 years. Our lasers are leveling farm land in Pakistan and reducing water consumption by more than a third.  I met the Director of the Biotech Institute in South India recently, and was pleased to know that 3 of our land levelers were purchased by them for reverse engineering. Recently, I helped design the position monitoring system for the thousands of detectors in the CMS at CERN in Geneva. All 40 systems have been made in my labs and have been incorporated at CERN’s CMS, and our lasers and precision optics have been used in Germany, Switzerland, and Spain apart from S.E. Asia.

I lapsed from active science in 2005 when I joined the Planning Commission but I’ve been back to my lab about 4 to 5 times, though we stay in touch. Lasers has a good future in Pakistan, and is in good hands.  The National Laser Labs is now being put together, and will commence shortly. I am content that there may now be more people working in lasers in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission than in nuclear physics!

You’ve had a remarkable career in academia, in research labs and in the government as member of the Planning Commission. What do you consider to be your most significant accomplishment? How would you like to be remembered ?

An embarrassing question! I think my legacy would be the starting of a completely new field in Pakistan: Lasers.

Spoken like a true scientist! One final question. Did your work in the government make you more hopeful about Pakistan’s future or less?

Planning Commission was an enormous learning experience for me. I initially looked after science and technology, higher education and industry (a good combination) and later education and health also. This was my first experience of working in the ‘Government’ and I was a bit surprised at the lack of institutional memory and just downright laziness and incompetence. I hope I raised the quality of discourse and analysis.

My biggest challenge [at the Commission] was the Vision 2030 project – trying to identify the most likely future for Pakistan among the many that were possible or desirable. This document is now largely forgotten in the middle of the political changes of the last two years, but going through this exercise really gave me a lot of hope about the future of Pakistan.

I am confident about the role for Pakistan in this century. We are not too small as to be irrelevant, in fact we are the about right population size and our younger people carry far less historical baggage; they are enterprising, more selective and also more demanding in terms of quality.

On that optimistic note, thank you very much, Dr. Khan and our best wishes.

Thank you.

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.

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.

When Did the HEC Decide?

The 7th meeting of Quality Assurance Committee was held on 19th April, 2005 in the regional office of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Lahore (see [1]). The meeting started with the approval of minutes of the last meeting of the Committee. The minutes were approved and the explanation of “international” with the Subject GRE Test used in the draft. It was explained to the members of the committee that word “international” is placed with the GRE Subject Test to draw a distinction between the GRE Type Test which is locally designed and already in practice, and the  standard GRE Test which is universally available for certain disciplines. The majority of the members and the chairman of the committee did not agree with the word “international” with Subject GRE as it does not exist in international nomenclature of the test. At last the members of the committee decided;

The word “international” will be removed from the Subject GRE-Test as Quality criteria of PhD level studies and it will be written as Subject GRE-Test, where available* with clarification at the bottom that local test will be designed for those subjects in which Subject GRE-Test is not available.

What should be a qualifying criterion?

First of all, it is useful to know a bit about the grading terminologies used by Education Testing Service (ETS), USA for GRE Subject Test. Later, we will discuss them in detail:

• Score (or scaled score)
• % Below (or percentile rank)
• Formula score (or raw score)

On May 30^th, 2006, Chairman HEC, Prof. Dr. Ata-ur-Rahman issued a letter no. 1-15/Adv(QA&LI) /2006/1394, in which he mentioned;

For admission of new students to Ph.D. as well as for upgradation/conversion of students already admitted in M.Phil to Ph.D., an International GRE (Subject) Test must be qualified (at least 50% score presently which will be increased to 60% after 3 years)

Please note that neither has the ETS yet released any document/method to find a percentage score of GRE test nor does the result card give any information about it. The GRE result card gives information about the score, percentage below (we call it percentile) and formula score.

In 2007, Chairman HEC, Dr. Ata-ur-Rahman wrote a letter [3] to the Vice Chancellors in which he asked:

Could you kindly ensure that no students currently enrolled in the disciplines of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology, Biology, English Literature, Chemistry, Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Psychology and allied disciplines are allowed to submit Ph.D theses in your university unless they have obtained at least a 50 percentile score in the respective international subject GRE examination. This is a rather low score presently and it will be increased to 60 percentile score in a couple of years.

In the letter mentioned above (in [3]), Dr. Ata-ur-Rahman used the term percentile score. As mentioned earlier, please again note that this terminology does not exist in the documents of ETS.

In July 2008, Prof. Dr. S. Sohail H. Naqvi, the Executive Director of HEC issued a letter [4], in which he mentioned the following criteria:

To “clear” the international GRE subject test the candidates will have to get Percentile Score equal or greater than the minimum Percentile Score which will be as follows:
i. 40% Percentile Score: Valid Until December 31, 2009
ii. 45% Percentile Score: Valid Until December 31, 2010
iii. 50% Percentile Score: Valid thereafter

So, what is a 40% Percentile Score?

If it is to be considered that Percentile Score means ‘percentile rank’ then 40% percentile rank means the 40% of 99 because the maximum percentile rank one can get is 99. Also this letter failed to clear the meaning of the word “Valid Until …”

In October 2009, Mr. Muneer Ahmed, Deputy Director (Quality Assurance), HEC issued a letter [5], to clarify the following:

I am directed to clarify that the qualifying score for the PhD Scholars who appeared in the International GRE Subject Test before 31st July 2008 is 40% (percentile) or 50%(percent) and after 31st July, 2008, percentile formula as conveyed earlier through the letter quoted above ([2] and [4]) will be applicable.

There was no need to say anything about such non-clarification. From the series of letters it is obvious that HEC was and still is facing dilemma about the criteria of clearing GRE.

In January 2010, HEC commission approved that [6]

GRE (International) Subject Test will be necessary at the time of admission to M.Phil/MS Programme leading to Ph.D.
The minimum acceptable scores are as follows:
i. 40% Percentile Score: Valid for Admissions until December 31, 2009
ii. 45% Percentile Score: Valid for Admissions until December 31, 2010
iii. 50% Percentile Score: Valid for Admissions until December 31, 2011.
iv. 60% Percentile Score: Valid for Admissions thereafter.
For presently continuing students (Admissions before January 11, 2010), the candidates must pass the GRE (International) Subject Test before submission of Ph.D. Dissertation. In disciplines where this test is not available, the test will be made available locally by National Testing Service (NTS), and if the Test is not available in NTS subject list, then a University Committee consisting of at least 3 Ph.D. faculty members in the subject area and approved by the HEC will conduct the Test at par with GRE (International) Subject Test.

Please note that the term “Percentile Score” doesn’t exist, it might be % below or percentile rank. Also clause (i) of above para has already been expired with respect to this letter [6] because it has now been imposed as a criterion to get admission in MS/M.Phil. Moreover subjects for which GRE test is not available, parallel to GRE Subject Test; the university commission of at least three PhDs will form their own test. This creates an injustice in many ways like fee, quality of test, checking criteria, and scoring method.

The text of the letter mentioned in [6] is available on the HEC website and it has been modified by the HEC without any intimation (it can be accessed here and old one is included in references). In the new letter, this test is only mandatory to get admission in PhD and also the word “international” with GRE Subject has been removed.

In March 2010, on answering a query from NUST, Rawalpindi, Mr. Muneer Ahmed wrote as follows [7]:

I am directed to inform you that all students enrolled/converted into PhD programme after May 31, 2005 and before July 31, 2008 are required to qualify International GRE Subject Test with 50% (percent) score and students enrolled/converted after July 31, 2008 have to qualify International GRE Subject Test with percentile score as mentioned in letter no. 1-10/(ED)/HEC/2008/961(copy attached)

It is not possible to find the percentage score of GRE Subject Test (see [8, p. 14]) and other thing is that why Mr. Muneer Ahmad didn’t refer to a latest letter[6] issued in January 2010.

In the following table we give the 50 percent score of each subject defined by the HEC as the 50 percent of the total scaled score. Please note that the HEC defined the score at 99 percentile rank in [10, page 14] as a total scaled score.

To get the 50 percent score in Chemistry and Computer Science, one has to just appear in GRE Subject Test without answering to any question.

How should we use the GRE, according to ETS, USA?

The “GRE Guide to the Use of Scores 2008-09” gives comprehensive information about the GRE test and is the best booklet to learn about the GRE grading terminologies. It is published by the GRE board. This guide is available on the ETS website; the following sentences/paragraphs are taken from this guide.

• Primary limitations of GRE test

Any GRE test, however, has two primary limitations: (1) it does not and cannot measure all the qualities that are important in predicting success in graduate study or in confirming undergraduate achievement and (2) it is an inexact measure; that is, only score differences that exceed the standard error of measurement of a given score can serve as reliable indications of real differences in academic knowledge and developed abilities [8, p. 5].

• Encouragement of appropriate use.

All users of GRE scores have an obligation to use the scores in accordance with published GRE Board policies and guidelines. Institutions have a responsibility to ensure that all individuals using GRE scores are aware of the GRE Board score-use policies and guidelines and to monitor the use of the scores, correcting instances of misuse when they are identified. The GRE Program staff is available to assist institutions in resolving score-misuse issues. [8, p. 6]

• Use Multiple Criteria

Regardless of the decision to be made, multiple sources of information should be used to ensure fairness and balance the limitations of any single measure of knowledge, skills, or abilities. These sources may include undergraduate grade point average, letters of recommendation, personal statement, samples of academic work, and professional experience related to proposed graduate study. GRE scores should not be used exclusively. [8, p. 6]

• Accept Only Official GRE Score Reports

The only official reports of GRE scores are those issued by Educational Testing Service and sent directly to approved institutions and organizations designated by the test takers. Scores obtained from other sources should not be accepted. [2, p. 6]

To ensure the authenticity of scores, the GRE Board urges that institutions accept only official reports of GRE scores received directly from ETS. [8, p. 9]

• Avoid Decisions Based on Small Score Differences

Small differences in GRE scores (as defined by the standard error of measurement) should not be used to make distinctions among examinees. Standard errors of measurement (SEMs) vary by test and are available in this publication. [8, p. 7]

• Minority Examinees (Students outside of USA)

GRE scores, like those on similar standardized tests, cannot completely represent the potential of any person, nor can they alone reflect an individual’s chances of long-term success in an academic environment. It should be remembered that the GRE tests provide measures of certain types of developed abilities and achievement, reflecting educational and cultural experience over a long period. Special care is required in interpreting the GRE scores of students who may have had educational and cultural experiences somewhat different from those of the traditional majority. [8, p. 8]

• Confidentiality and Authenticity of GRE Scores

GRE scores are confidential and are not to be released by an institutional recipient without the explicit permission of the examinee. GRE scores are not to be included in academic transcripts. Dissemination of score records should be kept at a minimum, and all staff who have access to them should be explicitly advised of the confidential nature of the scores. [8, p. 9]

Different types of scores

It is also useful to reiterate that there are three types of grading system in GRE subject.

• Score (or scaled score)
• % Below (or percentile rank)
• Formula score (or raw score)

[ Cutout: Report of Scores ]

The range of scaled scores is from 200 to 990, in 10-points increments, although the score range for any particular Subject Test is usually smaller [2, page 11]. Scaled score is a basic analogy to compare two examinees.

Scaled scores on the same Subject Tests generally are directly comparable across years. A Chemistry Test score of 650 in 2007, for example, should be considered equivalent to a Chemistry Test score of 650 earned in 2006. [8, p. 11]

Percentile rank means the percentage of examinees in a group who obtained scores lower than specified score [9]. Percentile ranks of two examinees cannot be comparable for two different tests on same subject, while score is comparable for same subject test but not for different.

Subject Test scores should be compared only with other scores on the same Subject Tests (for example, a 680 on the Physics Test is not equivalent to a 680 on the Chemistry Test). Percentile ranks should be compared only if they are based on the same reference population. [8, p.7]

ETS writes the following about Score and Percentile rank.

Note that although a score represents the same level of ability regardless of when the score was earned, its percentile rank may vary, depending on the scores of the group with which it is compared [9].

Percentile ranks shown on score reports are based on the performance of the current reference group for each test regardless of when the scores were earned. The percentile rank for any score may vary over the years depending on the scores of the group with which the score is compared. Thus, when two or more applicants are being compared, the comparison should be made on the basis of their respective scores.[8, p. 9]

At the score of 700 in Computer Science there is a 42 percentile rank for the performance of the all examinees who were tested between July 1, 2004 – June 30, 2007 (see [8, p. 14]) and 40 percentile for the performance of all examinees who tested between July 1, 2003 – June 30, 2006 (See [10, p. 14])

One can find the following about percentile rank by flipping the “Report of Scores*”.

The percentile ranks in this report indicate the percentage of examinees who scored below your score. Note that these percentile ranks may be different from those that applied when the score were originally reported to you if the scores were earned prior to July 2009. This reflects annual updating of these data to permit admission officers to compare scores, whenever earned, with those for a recent reference group.

Formula score is the number of correct responses* minus one-fourth the number of incorrect responses rounded to the nearest whole number. The maximum formula score depends upon the total numbers of MCQs in the test.

* Result card sent by ETS, USA to the examinee or score recipient.
** Here “responses” mean questions which are usually multiple choices.

Is it an international test?

It should be remembered that the GRE tests provide measures of certain types of developed abilities and achievement, reflecting educational and cultural experience over a long period. Special care is required in interpreting the GRE scores of students who may have had educational and cultural experiences somewhat different from those of the traditional majority. [8, p. 8]

HEC officials are saying it an “international” test but the facts are against it. In the following table the number of examinees, all over the world, are given who took test between July 1, 2004, and June 30, 2007 [8, p.14].

Please note that computer science is one of the biggest fields of study and only 1870 examinees took the GRE Subject Test in a year.

General Rules for PhD Scholars

If someone gets the admission in PhD, then generally he/she has to fulfill the following requirements to get the PhD degree (no doubt, these are major requirements).

• Approval of Research Proposal or Synopsis (before or after the admission)
• Course work (not compulsory all over the world)
• Research paper (not compulsory in some countries but compulsory in Pakistan.)
• Thesis writing
• Defense of the thesis

If the thesis of some Pakistani PhD scholar is ready for submission then he cannot submit his thesis because of the extra imposed condition of GRE Subject Test, which is usually used as a recommended test (but not required) to get admission in the few universities of USA (see number of examinees per year as a proof). Also this shows that research paper(s) and thesis of the PhD scholar have no worth and no quality without this test.

It is also strange that if the PhD scholar has qualified GRE Subject Test then all the work (research) done under the supervision of such person (supervisor), who is usually non-qualified in GRE Subject Test, attains HEC quality standard.

Taking the GRE Subject test and other information

If someone decides to take GRE Subject Test, then the only way is online registration through ETS website by using online payment mode (by Credit or Debit card).

• Test Fee: 160 US Dollars (Rs. 14000 approx.)
• Duration: 2 hours and 50 minutes
• Conducted thrice a year (in April, October, November)
• Centers (Pakistan): Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore
• Limited number of seats in every center.
• Result announcement after 40 days of the test date.

Conclusions

1. The GRE Subject Test spans 2 hours and 50 minutes, at the price of US$ 160 (approximately Rs. 14,000). It is not affordable for a majority of the students and this heavy cost puts real extra burden on these students. In fact, many good students, who would easily pass it, hesitate to take the GRE Subject Test because of its huge fee.
2. Percentile rank is best to compare the students of same subject in the same test (in which they appeared) but it is not recommended to be used as a tool for making merit.
3. ETS recommends the use of “Scaled Score” for comparing the ability of students as they appear in the test at different schedule (three times in a year).
4. This test is not generally meant to be used for the students and institutions outside the United States.
5. Most public sector universities in Pakistan are not score recipients of ETS and it is very easy to use fake result cards to get admission, and the ETS never confirms the result to institutions if they are not score recipients.
6. It is very difficult to register for the test because many students don’t have Credit or Debit cards for payment through the internet.
7. Pakistan is a very big country and this test is conducted only in three cities, with limited number of seats at each location. This is really creating a big problem for the students living far from these cities.
8. The number of examinees per year clearly indicates the popularity of the test. For example, 1870 students in the subject of Computer Science and 2797 students in the subject of Chemistry appeared in a year all over the world.
9. Percentile rank actually is a comparison of the students of certain group taking GRE Subject Test in a period of last three years with respect to the test date. In eight subjects, Pakistani students are compared against a small community of students from all over the world, and for the remaining subjects the criteria is totally different.
10. The HEC team was unaware of the true mechanism of the GRE Subject Test. Yet, they decided that a PhD scholar must appear in this test, just to meet international standards no matter what he/she will score.
11. There are a lot of deficiencies in the HEC letters regarding GRE Subject Test. Against the decision of 7^th meeting of Quality Assurance Committee of HEC, the HEC officials are still communicating it as an international test.
12. All the grading terminologies used by the HEC don’t match with the ETS standard terminologies.This clearly shows that HEC officials are unaware of the objective and mechanism of the GRE Subject Test.

References

[1] Minutes of the 7th meeting of Quality Assurance Committee dated 19th April, 2005
[2] No 1-15/Adv(QA&LI) /2006/1394 dated May 30, 2006
[3] No. 4-7/CHR/HEC/07/807 dated April 3, 2007
[4] No. 1-10/(ED)/HEC/2008/96/ dated July 14, 2008
[5] No. 1-G/DD-QA/HEC/2009/45 dated October 23, 2009
[6] No. 4-7/CHR/HEC/2010/06 dated January 11, 2010
[7] DD/QA/HEC/NUST/2010/224 dated March 05, 2010
[8] GRE Guide to the Use of Scores 2008-09
[9] Interpreting Your GRE® Scores (2008-09)
[10] GRE Guide to the Use of Scores 2007-08

All the references can be downloaded from here.

Atiq-ur-Rehman is a PhD scholar at the Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan. His areas of research are difference and functional equations, real functions, inequalities in monotonic, and convex functions and he has 8 research papers. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.

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”

It was a homerun less because of what was said, but more because of who said it. It was the same Malala, daughter of a very brave father, who had stood in front of national press, right in the middle of a boatload of Taliban fighters in Swat, and asked the Taliban why girls like her were not allowed to attend schools. Her father had covertly continued classes for 5th and 6th grade girls in his school even after Taliban in Swat had decreed that girls not be educated beyond 4th grade. Now, she had turned the tables and asked why the powers-that-be had allowed the situation to become so bad?

Malala’s zinger poses some deeply troubling questions about not just the sorry state of our education system, but also about who we really are as a nation. These are difficult, perhaps intractable, political questions which are outside the scope of this blog. What is within our scope, however, is “eliticization” of our education system, which is quite obvious to anyone who cares to look.

Pakistan is a country of great contrast. From the great plains of southern Punjab to the sky-high peaks of the Himalayas, the country is home to stark contrasts of geography, culture and economy. What does not get talked about enough, however, are the contrasts in our education system. In this Information Age education is the great equalizer. Or so it is said. But, how can education be an equalizer when just a few miles from where Capital Talk was being taped, the International School of Islamabad (ISoI) charges annual fee of more than $16,000? I do not know how much Malala’s father earns in a year, but if he makes what an average Pakistani does in a year, which is under $900, then he would have to save 100% of his income for 18 years before he can afford to pay for just one year of Malala’s 6th grade education at the International School. In all likelihood, the fee at ISoI would have gone up by then!

This problem of exorbitant fees and the resulting elitism in the educational landscape is not limited to the likes of International School or to primary and secondary education only. In higher education, consider the example of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). LUMS has been the leading business school in at least the northern half of the country for over two decades now, and has developed a reputation of being an “elite’s” school. The label is not wholly without merit. After all, this is a school where the annual tuition (for the recently opened School of Sciences and Engineering) is over Rs. 400,000 – almost 6x the average annual income of a Pakistani. Just as a comparison, even the most expensive universities in the US have tuition rates that are in the same range as the country’s average annual household income, i.e., $40,000 to $50,000 per year.

It is true that schools like LUMS’ SSE offer generous financial aid and need-blind admission. And, perhaps, it is also true that the kinds of finances needed to run a state-of-the-art facility in Pakistan requires these tuition levels. In short, it may well be true that the kind of education that these schools want to impart requires the kinds of tuition that they demand. But, what is equally true is that when these schools decide to operate far beyond the reaches of ordinary citizens of this country, then they also bear an awesome social responsibility. It is not enough to provide limited number of scholarships to students that make it in the door, simply because millions of students can never get the kind of primary and secondary education needed to get their foot in the door. It is no accident, after all, that three quarters of SSE’s first batch of students came from schools that follow the Cambridge system, not the local FSc system. To me, scholarships and/or financial aid is what I would expect from any institution of higher education, regardless of the social context in which it operates. In Pakistan, educational institutions MUST do more.

The responsibility for “doing more” falls heavily on institutes of higher education for two main reasons: first, by virtue of their position atop the education pyramid, these institutes dictate what good and well-rounded basic education means, so their actions, and their example, can lead to a realignment of priorities throughout the basic and secondary education system. Consider for a moment, how, say, the Beaconhouse School System would have to re-design its secondary education programs if the top-tier universities in Pakistan announced tomorrow that they would be looking at “an applicant’s demonstrated ability and interest in community service”. I think it’s safe to say that it would bring about a paradigm shift, perhaps not instantaneously but certainly in the longer run. Second, these institutes rightly claim to be the breeding grounds of tomorrow’s leaders. In fact, that’s their core selling point. Another way to say this is that, these institutions are the last pit-stop before the top-crop of the society is sent off to the races – for power, influence, wealth and recognition. The years that these students spend at the universities have a profound effect on the choices that they make once they enter their professional lives. What could be a better way to influence their priorities than by exposing them to the ugly realities and shameful inequities of life around them?

Schools like LUMS, Agha Khan University, Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute and other elite private universities, therefore, have the twin responsibility of inculcating a strong sense of social responsibility among their students, staff and faculty, and uplifting the educational standards in the world outside their boundary walls. Both of these ought to be among the core components of their mission, and not just footnotes to it. While each university can come up with its own creative ways to fulfilling these responsibilities, following is a first attempt at some concrete proposals to make this happen:

• Each of these universities should establish an Office of Community Service whose aim should be to conceive, facilitate and execute university-wide community service programs. This is important because, while student organizations can do a lot on their own, an office like this provides continuity, basic organizational infra-structure and, most importantly, institutional memory to effectively and perpetually execute good programs. This doesn’t have to be a large bureaucracy; it can be something as simple as a single mid-level staffer who coordinates work of various student bodies and brings faculty into the loop by offering them small, and focused tasks.
• Service-learning should be made an integral part of the curriculum, and a program requirement for 4-year undergraduate programs. Summer internships following the freshman year can be used for this purpose. Students can, for example, be offered to tutor at low-cost tuition centers for metric and FSc students, or intern at NGOs, or organize and execute fund raising activities for university’s community service programs and other non-profit organizations.
• Universities can also “adopt” low-cost private schools and assist them in improving their standard of education. Training teachers, hosting co-curricular activities on university premise, and organizing field trips for students can all be part of this “adoption” package.
• Finally, society has given universities a unique power: the power to bestow honor upon people, primarily by granting individuals prestigious degrees for their academic achievements. But universities can also leverage this power to honor and highlight individuals who do the greater good. Unfortunately, NGOs and those who work for them often do not get the respect that they deserve. Universities can lead the way in transforming these social attitudes by bestowing honors and recognition upon these individuals. By doing so, they would be pointing a way to respect and recognition in the society that is different from the usual route through the corridors of power and wealth. A simple way to do this could be to invite people who work for the greater good to give commencement addresses and keynote speeches. Surely, they are better role models for our youth than the default option – the rich and famous.

Of all the things that watan-e-aziz needs, it needs nothing more than good men and women who see the world through the eyes of the common man, have the tools to make it a little better for everyone, and are cognizant of their responsibility of doing so. And, it is at our elite universities that all these ingredients can best be combined so that we can begin to answer Malala’s questions. And, if we don’t, Malala might ask: why can’t she go to the same school as President Zardari’s daughter after all? The lottery of womb? Something tells me it won’t be a compelling answer for this smart young lady.

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.

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.

It was, therefore, a welcome surprise when on a summer Monday morning in the same Afghan community, a dozen women, all over the age of 40, showed up at Ersari Middle School. All of them were eager to sit in the class. The women had to be politely told that the school did not have enough resources to accommodate older women while there were several younger girls wanting to be schooled. At the same time a few girls below the age of 13 also showed up. When they were told that the school allowed girls only between the ages of 13 and 25, two girls came forward and said: “We are turning 13 in just a few weeks. Can we please be allowed to join?”

The idea that generated such strong interest in these Pakistani women and girls originated on other side of the globe: at IDEAS competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). While there are several collaborative educational, public service, entrepreneurship, health care, and consulting programs between MIT and dozens of countries – such as Brazil, India, China, Israel, Spain and Germany – surprisingly there is none for Pakistan. However, Saba Gul, a recent graduate of MIT, was determined to leverage the talent pool, mentorship, and resources of MIT. She teamed up with Barakat – a Cambridge, MA based organization aiming to advance literacy in South and Central Asia – to come up with a project plan that had a shot at winning the IDEAS competition.
Like most other competitions at MIT – whether it is a business plan competition or an arts contest – IDEAS  competition awards innovative ideas that are feasible and can make a strong community impact. The BLISS team consisting of Saba Gul, Dr. Ishrat Hussain, Nadeem Mazen, Ghazala Mehmood, and Eleni Orphanides developed a unique approach to promoting education while eliminating child labor at the same time. The idea is innovative yet simple: teach skills and hold workshops at schools that students can use to make money in a much more efficient way than they currently do mostly by looming carpets – a profession they seem to hate but unable to let go of because of lack of other skills and education. They usually work ten to fourteen hours and make up to four thousand rupees a month, whereas at school they can make around one thousand rupees by working only for an hour or so a day. Though, currently, part of that money comes from donations, the goal is to make the process sustainable so that students can earn enough money from their work at schools. This would reduce the opportunity cost of getting education in a society where most kids do not go to school so that they have enough time to make money to feed their families and themselves.

At the Barakat schools, they learn vocational skills such as embroidery, jewelry making, and toy making and actually make sellable products such as purses and toys, which are then sold in the market – some of them in the US. When I asked Saba, the program leader, whether this would constitute as child labor, she told me that BLISS went a long way to ensure that none of what they do is child labor by any means. They consulted the International Labor Organization guidelines and talked to experts. “We only allow girls between the ages of 13 and 25 to work for a maximum of an hour a day. All raw materials are kept in school so girls do not spend extra hours working. The program is carefully designed to allow these children to get education”, said Saba. Students are also taught several entrepreneurship and marketing classes at school, which are directly applicable to their workshops. By learning these skills, not only do they become more productive citizens for the society, they are also able to attend school. Obviously, a large driver behind this would be support from the community and the markets where these products are sold. It will be practically impossible to replace their 12 hours of work with 1 hour of work a day and compensate them by an equal amount – if it were not for the generosity of buyers and supporters. My hope is that when people hear this story, they will be more inclined to buy these products than would be bought if simply left to market supply and demand.
“Our one year goal is to make this a financially sustainable system for the 40 girls, and the long-term goal is to partner with established vocational schools, expand this model to other kinds of skills, and scale it to other communities”, says Saba. Whether they continue their studies after 8th grade is unknown at this point, but the goal of the program is to promote education, while imparting valuable skills such as entrepreneurship and marketing, at a primary and middle level. This learning and market environment is expected to become viral and encourage even more kids to attend the Barakat schools. The hope is that these children equipped with just primary education can potentially change the society for the better. Their next generations are more likely to study to even higher levels, and an ascending cycle would continue.

BLISS is still a program in its infancy. Several obstacles need to be overcome for it to be successful. First, while the program matures and a working supply chain is put in place to make and sell products, there is a need for funding so that students can be paid enough stipend to compensate for their forgone work income. Second, it is uncertain whether students would continue to study once they learn marketable skills and are tempted to start working full time to make even more money. Lastly, logistics of marketing and selling the products need to be panned out, and the project needs continuous support from volunteers and others in order for it to be sustainable.
BLISS is an intriguing approach to solving a complicated problem: several people still do not see the value of education, when they can earn more without going to school, and a degree doesn’t necessarily guarantee them a decent job. However, BLISS hopes that by imparting real life business skills along with school education, it has an opportunity to change that — one child at a time.
You can donate for the cause here. To make sure the funds go to BLISS, please specify BLISS in the program before donating.
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.

“Our best universities have, paradoxically, typically looked down their noses at education, as if it were intellectually inferior. The result is that the strongest students are often in colleges that have no interest in education, while the most inspiring professors aren’t working with students who want to teach. This means that comparatively weaker students in less intellectually rigorous programs are the ones preparing to become teachers.

So the first step is to get the best colleges to throw themselves into the fray. If education was a good enough topic for Plato, John Dewey and William James, it should be good enough for 21st-century college professors.”

The case in Pakistan is similar. Major public universities like Punjab University and Karachi University do not offer doctoral programs in education, while research universities like LUMS and Quaid-i-Azam University don’t even have programs in education. As a result, there is very little, if any, research on the challenges posed by poverty, malnutrition, parental illiteracy, different regional languages and customs, and, now, war and internal displacement on children’s educational needs and possible remedies.

However, to assume that this is simply a matter of tweaking curriculum of our B. Ed and M. Ed programs (which HEC has done in 2006) or initiating research on education is to miss the underlying problem. The underlying problem – perhaps one of the few commonalties between the education system in the US and Pakistan – is that of the basic paradigm; a paradigm that treats education as just another subject in humanities or social sciences which can be taught in a classroom setting through lectures on child development, pedagogy, and classroom assessment, etc.

Engel makes a compelling case for a fundamental change in how education programs are conceived. First, she argues that “future teachers should continue studying the subject they hope to teach, with outstanding professors. It makes no sense at all to stop studying the thing you want to teach at the very moment you begin to learn how.” In the context of Pakistan, this would require our elite universities to improve upon HEC’s recommended curriculum in education since it leaves little room for courses to enhance subject-expertise. In other words, it is simply not enough to teach a prospective Physics teacher a course in “Teaching Physics”; she should continue to learn physics and be inspired by it.

Next, Engel makes a particularly inspired recommendation: she argues that students in education programs “should learn their craft the way surgeon learns to operate: by intense supervision in real setting with expert mentors”. “Young teachers”, she continues, “like young doctors, should work side by side with skilled mentors, getting plenty of feedback, having plenty of opportunities to observe and taking on greater and greater responsibility as they improve”.

The key insight behind this proposal that we find inspiring is that it neither takes “good teaching” as a science that can be taught in a classroom environment, nor as an innate ability. It accepts the notion that teaching is a craft and that this craft, like surgery, can best be perfected through keen observation, hands-on practice and ‘close-loop’ mentoring. We believe that this is the true spirit that, unfortunately, is not recognized and repeated enough in discussions about teacher training programs.

Engel goes on to make other key suggestions. She argues that the benefits of this shift in paradigm can only be realized if universities make their respective education programs more selective and free of charge. This appears to be a prescription that is almost custom-made for Pakistan which is experiencing a private schooling boom of its own. If a university, through a selective and well-marketed education program, produces high quality graduates, schools (especially, private ones) will be pressured by parents to hire teachers from such programs. This will result in gainful employment of well-trained teachers and improved education for the students – a win-win situation.

Surely, implementing these ideas and bringing other innovative approaches to our education programs will require more resources. But, all of these are investments in human capital; investments that can have deep and far-reaching effects on our education system. The question, then, is: does our society value quality education enough to make these investments? Surely, this is not an argument for greater ‘quantity’ of education, which is a serious problem it is very own right – at 61% literacy, how could it not be? This is an argument for quality. And, more than that, it is an argument for taking a new look at the very profession of teaching – its possibilities and its responsibilities. Can we afford not to invest in our teachers?