The recent article by Sohaib Khan has touched a very important subject. Let me start by saying that I do not disagree with the core idea of that piece which, if I am allowed to summarize in a sentence, would be that research in Pakistan needs to be relevant to the local problems, with young researchers mentored towards practical, solutions-oriented research. Read the rest of this entry »
Building an ICT R&D Eco-System in Pakistan: A Conversation with Dr Qasim Sheikh (Part 2-of-2)
October 22, 2009
On Funding Projects from the Industry
STEP: Till now, mostly you were funding projects in the academia. Would you be looking at funding projects that are directly initiated by the industry?
QS: We are supposed to fund projects submitted by the industry. Our proposal can be initiated by even an individual. But, being an entity that funds public money, the longevity of the institution to which we are giving money is very important to us. An individual can take the money (from us), work for a little while, and then disappear. What do we do then? Universities don’t disappear. They can provide longevity and credibility to the project. And, it is not (just) longevity for the length of that project but even after that. Read the rest of this entry »
Access to Higher Education Top Priority for HEC: Laghari
August 31, 2009
Dr. Javaid Laghari, the new Chairman of the Higher Education Commission, said today that providing access to higher education for the 24.5 million youth who are not enrolled in universities will be the top priority for the HEC. Dr. Laghari made these comments about an hour ago during an interview on Breakfast at Dawn, hosted by Naveen Naqvi. According to Dr. Laghari, only 0.5 million youth currently have access to higher education, whereas the number of Pakistanis of university-going age is around 25 million. He felt hopeful that the democratic government will fund the development of new universities to help educate a large number of potential students.
Editor’s Note: Since the establishment of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in 2002, the higher education sector in Pakistan has undergone a transformation both in its size and its nature. Dr. Sohail Naqvi, the Executive Director of the HEC, has been at the helm of many of these changes. STEP’s student editor Mariyam Khalid recently sat down with Dr. Naqvi to learn more about the HEC and its mandate. In the second of this two part interview, the scope of the HEC’s mandate and its policy-making procedures are discussed. The interview concludes with Dr. Naqvi’s vision for the future of the HEC.
STEP: Do you think that the HEC has taken too much on its plate? It is directly involved in curriculum setting, hiring and firing professors, setting up distance education classrooms, and even assessing universities. Should the HEC delegate some of these tasks?
SN: We definitely should delegate some of these tasks and we are now actively involved in trying to distance ourselves from institutions of programs. Earlier, we got involved with so many of these things because nobody was doing them nor did we have any mechanism for them, for example, foreign faculty hiring. Actually, Faculty hiring should be done by universities as per best practices, where the universities themselves identify the qualified personnel, negotiate their salaries, and provide them incentives to join the faculty. Universities are fully capable of doing that but they were not doing it. Which is why we had to get involved in the execution of a lot of programs. The scholarship program is another example that comes to mind. But we are now shifting our focus. For example, we are shifting the scholarship program so that it now needs to be run by the universities as per best practices. So there was a need to build the capacities of the universities to perform best practices and have good governance. There are other small sized agencies that are not doing enough and are not widespread enough. For example, the HEC has not been involved in the domain of colleges at the moment, and we are criticized on various forums that we should be. But it is a capacity issue; the HEC can only do so much. It is an evolving organization as any living organization has to be. We took on the tasks that nobody else had done before. There were things we needed to do ourselves to get things started. We have designed a lot of these things so that they would start moving at an arm’s length over time and ultimately become independent entities away from the HEC. So the answer to your question is that yes, we could delegate but at times we need to build the organization to which we can delegate.
Editor’s Note: Since the establishment of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in 2002, the higher education sector in Pakistan has undergone a transformation both in its size and its nature. Dr. Sohail Naqvi, the Executive Director of the HEC, has been at the helm of many of these changes. STEP’s student editor Mariyam Khalid recently sat down with Dr. Naqvi to learn more about the HEC and its mandate. In the first of this two-part interview, the performance of the HEC, the local relevance of research and other key issues regarding research in Pakistan are examined.
STEP: You have worked as a professor, as a dean, as an industrial entrepreneur and now as a policy-maker in the government. Which of these roles did you find the most rewarding?
SN: I find the one that I’m doing now the most rewarding because of its ability to influence so many factors pertaining to education in Pakistan. But I do miss the university environment, especially the interaction with students. I’ve always loved teaching and being in the classroom. In fact, I sometimes catch myself talking to my colleagues as if I’m lecturing them! So that’s definitely something that I do miss. There is a freedom in being a professor that is simply not available in any other job. When I’ve had it with administration, I can always go back to being a professor. Read the rest of this entry »
Science and Education in the Kerry-Lugar Bill
April 19, 2009
House Resolution 1886, known as the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement PEACE act, introduced on April 2nd, 2009 by Rep. Howard Berman authorizes President Obama to dramatically increase non-military assistance to Pakistan – $1.5 billion a year for five years. The scope of the act includes strengthening democratic, judicial, and government institutions, support for public education, the establishment of a human rights commission, healthcare development and cultural and educational programs. This is the House version of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, currently referred to committee; it still has to be voted in the House and in the Senate before reaching the President.
This bill constitutes the clearest articulation yet of the direction the United States wishes to see Pakistani civil society take. It reflects an understanding on the part of the US leadership that the military engagement of the Pakistan army is just one of many fronts that the battle against the Taliban is being waged. Education takes a central role in the bill, requiring the regulation of madrassas (enforcing existing Pakistani law) and advocating the development of a comprehensive national curriculum, framed on “modern” principles, particularly in FATA. The bill highlights a number of urgent national educational needs including women’s literacy (current adult literacy rate of females as a percentage of males is 59%, among the largest differentials in the world [3]), increasing teacher salaries and training, and linking education more closely with employment. In Section 102, the details of public education reform are outlined:
