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.

STEP: Moving on to the topic of higher education. Do you think that the level of financial support that higher education, in general, and the Higher Education Commission, in particular, is getting from the government can be sustained?

Asad Abidi: It is not getting (a lot of support) or it might be getting it for a moment but, you know, Pakistan is bankrupt and all this investment is from borrowed funds from the future. The typical elected government is just running scared, trying to keep its head above water. And, unfortunately, this is not going to change (anytime soon). So, the question is how do you take a country with so many needs and keep higher education running? The only way I can see it happening is if a substantial allocation, such as from the military budget, is diverted toward higher education. The military has never deprived itself of money. In the worst of times, their budgets have gone untouched, their privileges have gone untouched. But, it will take a political leader with guts to do this.

Honestly, I think the only way it could happen is if the United States, which effectively supports the Pakistan military, were to say that ‘we don’t really believe that it is valuable to add more men to your forces or add to your existing perks and privileges; this is actually only going to lead to more disenchantment from civil society and unrest in the region. So, you must cut your budget by, let’s say, 10% or 15% and that this money must go into higher education to deliver some hope to Pakistan’s people. Otherwise we will withdraw our support’. Only then might things change.  So, it’s going to be really hard unless you have massive civil protest in Pakistan. I don’t think Pakistan is quite ready for that kind of thing yet. People dispirited by spiraling inflation, power outages, unemployment, kleptocracy, can hardly be expected to rally in numbers against a bloated military budget.

STEP: Can private endowments, funded by wealthy individuals perhaps, fill this funding gap?

AA: Well, there are precedents (of that) in the region. We have the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (established 1945) and the various Birla Institutes of Technology and Science (established 1929) in India, which are funded through endowments from these families. So, in India wealthy people have funded expensive science education over long periods of time, with world-class outcomes. In Turkey, there are institutes and private universities, such as Koc University, that have large endowments from industrialists. In Pakistan, perhaps there is not that scale of money, certainly not that scale of investment in a single institution to fulfill its financial needs in a sustainable manner (except, of course, for the Aga Khan University).

Another important point is that the Tatas and Birlas believed in a vision of India’s future. Today their institutions are run by trustees, often with some membership from those families. But, the families don’t meddle in affairs of the institutes. They continue to provide very generous funding, but place their faith and trust in the scientists and educators who work there. I noticed that in Pakistan, institutions seem to rely entirely on the power and charisma of one person — that’s one extreme — and on the other extreme, you have institutions that demand transparency in everything. That essentially makes it impossible for administrators and decision-makers to work, and it’s not healthy either. You very rarely find institutions in Pakistan that have found the right balance. Pakistan has yet to mature in these matters.

STEP: But, isn’t the ‘disconnect’ between higher education institutions and the industry also responsible for the lack of private funds?

AA: Yes, that’s also true. In fact, there is a large breach between industry and universities in Pakistan. The reason for this, I think, is that Pakistani universities, again, have not yet grown up. People like Qasim Shiekh (CEO, National ICT R&D Fund) do demand technology transfer and we certainly need to hear more of that, but I don’t think currently there are many examples of successful US-style transfer of technology from a university to a company, where the academics involved also furthered scholarship in the process and published papers. There may be some good synergy between the military establishment and certain institutions like NUST and CASE, but it’s funded by the military, I don’t know how much of it can be published, nor how much is publishable. Unless universities are on guard, these arrangements can turn them into job shops. In any case, this sort of activity is just not happening at a large scale in Pakistan yet.

Take the example of the indigenous pharmaceutical industry (I exclude herbal and natural medicines). They are doing zero research. Zero. One of the reasons is that there are no pharmaceutical scientists of any standing who can go and develop their own formulations. Another is that the companies cannot see the payoff. This is true for so much else in Pakistan, yet much the reverse in India. Pharmaceuticals and synthetic chemical companies there are doing a roaring global business. I am told that tractor companies in Pakistan have tried to engage professors as consultants but it was a complete write-off. If your applied sciences cannot make tangible contributions to the economy, you’re just dreaming about the benefits of higher education. Again, we must understand that there will be a good deal of fumbling and missteps at first, but science and engineering academics in Pakistan must discover ways of closing the breach with industry.

Finally, Pakistan is one of the few countries in the world where vocational training institutions in any numbers either didn’t take off, or failed. Korea industrialized itself on vocational education. So did Japan, the UK, and Australia, all on different models. That is how countries industrialize. So, to take the opposite point of view, Pakistan doesn’t need more universities; in fact we have far too many as it is, because their graduates find it hard to gain employment, and cannot compete in numbers in the global marketplace for PhDs. What Pakistan needs more is vocational training of quality. To do that, it needs to make linkages with outside countries, pay them if necessary, but also hold these institutes to a high standard and produce people who use their hands and their brains, who have real skills, who have technology training, and who build things. Training in subjects like metallurgy, materials, machining, automotive design, communications equipment, modern textile practices and so on. Higher education nowhere directly prepares people to build an industrial base; it only does so in an abstract and indirect sense.

STEP: One of the questions we asked Dr. Qasim Sheikh in a recent interview was that Pakistan is still largely an agricultural society, not an industrial one. Can we by-pass the industrialization process and become a knowledge-based economy directly? He was fairly optimistic that it is not just possible, but that the revolution in ICT is making it happen already, and the example he gave was 70 million cell phone users versus 5 million landlines in Pakistan. If it can happen …

AA: No, no, hold on, let’s get something straight. Yes, indeed cell phones have totally changed the fabric of our society; there is no question about that. But does that mean Pakistan is now a high-tech economy as a result? Come on, it’s only at the mercy of Mobilink and Warid and so on. They have done all the investment and if they were to pull out, that would be the end; there is no real knowledge in Pakistan that has developed as a result of the cell phone being made affordable to everybody.

These multi-nationals bring in pre-packaged systems that are deployed nationwide. We visited Mobilink, which is the leading player, and they said that they have hundreds of employees but they do some software customization for applications and maintenance of the base stations. Not many know the technical details of how the system works; it just comes as a package, they mostly maintain it.

They agreed that Pakistan needs people who really understand how wireless communication works, and who can innovate on their own; it doesn’t yet have those people in numbers.

STEP: If somebody gave you $80 million and said, do whatever you want to do with it in Pakistan in the higher education sector. Would you go set up something like LUMS SSE, with its emphasis on basic sciences, or would you build some vocational training institutes?

AA: I would still invest in something like the SSE. Pakistan has plenty of institutions that cater for today’s needs, but no institution that is developing expertise for the future, things that are going to be really important in the mid-twenty first century and beyond. I think for that you need something like the SSE.

But, I would do it at a much modest scale to make that money last a really long time. In Pakistan, I think the tendency is to build monuments, harking perhaps to the Mughal emperors. It is important to get beyond that. So, if I had $80 million, I would be working out of a temporary building and using the money to get the best people, give them excellent salaries and the best working environment. That’s it, because the key to a good roll out is a long term vision, realistic scope and producing work of the highest quality in teaching and research.

STEP: Do you see a role of the Pakistani diaspora in the improvement of education in Pakistan?

AA: When I announced to the people I know here that I am planning to move to Pakistan, they were very supportive. They thought it was a great idea to go there. But it was largely limited to pats on the back.

There are a few wealthy Pakistanis here who may have the kind of money that it takes to actually make a difference at a place like LUMS. But, they don’t have trust in any Pakistani institution. So none of them would want to, let us say, create a chair at LUMS or a scholarship endowment. They would have no problem creating a chair in the United States on a subject like Islamic Studies or Pakistan Studies. This is because Pakistan institutions have not yet won their confidence. Until this changes, the diaspora will remain of little help in building large institutions.

Beyond building trust in Pakistan, the diaspora should build its financial power and organize itself to lobby in this country to help real causes in Pakistan.  You know about the USAID money that is flowing into Pakistan to help fight the war on terror. Yet I don’t know of much lobbying or participation by the diaspora in helping USAID or the State Department to identify causes where this money is best invested. Pakistan has so many needs, and members of the diaspora can help sort through those needs.

STEP: Finally, what would you advise in terms of the factors that one should consider before deciding to move to Pakistan?

AA: I think you should tie yourself to a successful cause. Don’t adopt failing causes in Pakistan, it is too big a country for one person to make a difference. You can soon be left exhausted and dispirited. Once you join such a cause, become an advocate and ambassador for it, involve other people and “move the mountain” together. And whatever you do there, do not compromise on quality. Work at a “world class” standard. That’s what we learn from Pakistan’s successes, such as the Indus Basin Project, the atomic energy project, and others. That’s how LUMS’ SSE faculty is doing it in the classroom and the lab.

My contention is regarding the purpose of promoting university research in Pakistan. Surely, it cannot be only to solve pressing current socio-economic problems of Pakistan. If that were so, a much better approach, in purely economic terms, would be to setup a few research centers (like the National Labs of United States or centers like KRL, NESCOM, etc.) that hire highly-qualified people to lead a few groups in identified focus areas. These groups can hire local graduate and under-graduate students for thematic research. Moreover, many of the most pressing technological issues facing Pakistan do not need cutting-edge or new research. Many of the problems with our power-, gas- and water-infrastructure have well-known solutions. Even many of the most basic military requirements can be solved locally if proper governmental policies (local business subsidies, tax-breaks, transparency) are implemented, allowing existing technologies to be developed by indigenous companies. Indeed, Pakistan already has companies with the engineering capabilities needed to solve many of our problems. As two examples, Emerging Energy System and Integrated Dynamics can provide solutions in energy and military sectors, respectively. The barriers to such solutions are political, economic, and social, and thus outside the purview of this forum. But, it would be naïve to say that academia can overcome these barriers and deliver solutions to the common-man.  

So, what then is, or should be, the purpose of fostering academic research in Pakistan? On top of building a knowledge-based economy where entrepreneurship springs from academic efforts, there are three other, equally important, reasons to foster academic research.  First, developing and retaining a pool of intellectuals and academics that can enrich any debate and social discourse within the country, and also stop or reverse brain drain. Surely, you cannot have a robust higher education system without retaining and attracting the best.  Secondly, there are pedagogical benefits to inculcating research within universities. A research-active faculty remains up-to-date in their field, benefiting the students while also developing their research skills. Even more so, qualified academics tend to have greater exposure, and a different world view, which can be refreshing for the students, enriching them both personally and socially. Finally, by doing research at the cutting edge, academia can not only identify potential future problems, but also offer solutions when the need arises. As two examples, academic research seeded the development of Atomic bomb by the US in WWII and Britain’s cipher-breaking at Bletchley Park.  

Each of these purposes of fostering research in universities has a long-term and intrinsically unquantifiable benefit. Building a robust research ecosystem should be viewed in a manner similar to a country’s defense; neither has an immediate benefit to the man on the street, yet both are essential for prosperity and progress. 

Turning now to the core ingredient necessary to build and maintain an eco-system for research in universities: recent PhDs. A higher education system is like an automobile, with the policies, universities, and funding agencies the body and engine of the car, but the human resources (academics and students) are the essential fuel that runs the automobile. The more refined the fuel, the more smooth the running. I focus on the needs of young graduates for an important reason: fresh graduates that decide to return to Pakistan align their career prospective with that of their host university and, on a larger scale, with the academic profile of the country.  

However, it appears that the policies of universities and governments are not adequately addressing the need to attract the best and brightest young graduates. HEC has one program for placement of fresh PhDs, whereby eligible PhD’s are guaranteed placement in Pakistani universities for a PKR 80,000 salary. However, this program might paradoxically promote mediocrity, as the brightest returns would anyway be guaranteed placement in the top 5-6 universities in Pakistan.

I contend that while a good salary is a must, we cannot use salary as an incentive to lure and retain our best minds. The fresh graduates wanting to return to Pakistan do so of other-than-monetary motives (patriotism, youthful idealism, family, religion, etc.). In my discussion with recently graduated friends regarding their decision to return, having teaching and research freedom are their top two concerns. The first of these is largely affected by the openness of the universities while the second is related to the policies and constraints set by funding agencies.  

Academic freedom would mean the ability to innovate within their universities in terms of course content. Allowing new experimental courses not only introduces new areas to students but also piques their interest in those areas, potentially helping the faculty in research.  Research freedom means the ability to choose a research area of their choosing, perhaps close to their PhD area of expertise, allowing the use of their skill set developed during graduate research. 

Such research freedom can only be provided if these fresh PhDs are provided with initial, no-strings-attached, funding by either their universities of employment or funding agencies. One possible option would be to offer competitive awards, similar to the NSF CAREER awards, that provide seed-funding to new and aspiring faculty without requiring local or socially relevant research. These can be offered for 3-5 years, with renewal every year after the first two based on performance. Thereafter the research agenda is set by the agencies to shepherd research, in a manner similar to that suggested in Sohaib’s article. Another approach, quite forcefully argued in a DAWN article, would be to develop endowment funds at universities that allow them to support and attract the brightest fresh PhD’s.  

Forcing young PhDs to immediately focus on locally relevant research will in fact be counter-productive. As Sohaib’s article points out quite correctly, young faculty members need confidence and experience to do publishable research that also solves local problems. Another important aspect to consider for these fresh graduates is their remoteness from Pakistan during the 5-7 years of their higher education. Their grasp of local problems will only develop over time. Time is also needed to develop rapport with local researchers to do cross-disciplinary research, typical of a socially-relevant work, that needs collaboration. In fact, any good researcher will, over a period of time, attempt to address local problems even if it requires them to step out of their comfort zones.  

To summarize, while socially-relevant research should be one of the main goals for developing research infrastructure in universities it should be developed for other, equally important, purposes: attracting and retaining the best academics, providing up-to-date course contents, and preparing for unforeseen problems. Furthermore, for the research ecosystem to flourish it requires attracting and keeping the most brilliant minds within Pakistan. For this purpose the aspirations of these academics, and especially the recently graduated and returning PhDs, needs to be taken into account. Thus, a balance needs to be maintained through seeding constraint-free research by junior research faculty, mentoring them towards research benefiting the man-on-the street as their research experience matures.

 Affan Syed is a post doctoral research associate at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California. His research focus is on systems research in terrestrial and underwater sensor networks.  He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan in 2000, and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering and PhD in Computer Science from University of Southern California in 2004, and 2009 respectively. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.

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.

We don’t fund projects just for the sake of those projects. We fund projects to create an eco-system as well. You don’t plant a seed on a land that may be abandoned or may  be sold for building a commercial building and the tree will be cut down even before it has a chance to get 5 feet high.  So, when industry comes to us, we say, it may be better for you if you come through a university channel.

That’s not a (strict) condition, however. We have also funded industry proposals directly. Actually, we very clearly say that we are a pre-angel fund. We fund creation of technology. But, we are finding out that the challenge of monitoring them can at times become difficult. A lot of these companies start to take this funding as work-for-contract. They say, ‘oh, you asked us to do these things and we’ve done these things, end of story and we’re done’. When you are trying to create an eco-system, and you’re not even asking for any money back, you want the sort of vision where the entity that gets the money runs with the ball. It doesn’t matter whether it was a 100m dash or a marathon; if you have gas, just keep going.

STEP: You talked about longevity and stability but, in a sense, innovation is counter to that. Fostering innovation may mean saying, ‘okay, here’s a smart guy, he has a really smart idea, let me give him some money to go build something’.

QS: We do exactly that. We just say, please park in a university so that there is some stability. You know, smart guys can be very fickle too. [Laughter] If the smart guy walks out, we get totally stuck. If we were VCs, and it was private money, we could say, okay, we were going to lose ninety percent of the projects anyway. This is one of the ninety percent. Ten percent will take us forward. But, with the public funding and government level accountability, we can be taken to task for funding such projects.

Whereas, if the money goes to a university, and a professor is involved, then if nothing else the professor becomes the archive. If the smart guy moves on to the next smart idea, some student or another entrepreneur could come and take the idea and developed IP forward.

STEP: So, what’s the motivation for industry then to get professors up to speed?

QS: One of the ways I motivate industry to partner with the academia is that I give them the argument that suppose you get  Rs. 15-20 million from us and suppose the solution that you create is a hit, and suddenly your product is bought by General Electric or Microsoft or some consulting company. Now, the buyer says, we want to take your  company to a 300-people development centre. Where are you going to get 300 people from? The idea is that, if an entrepreneur hosts his project in a university and gets a professor and a few students involved, he may not get 300 students by the time the project is completed but at least you would have sown the seed in the university and you will be two years ahead in creating this pipeline. So, a very big positive effect for the industry here is that the human resource developed by universities is in line with industry’s requirements.

STEP: Shouldn’t we make a technology park or an incubator with every university?

QS: That’s exactly what we’re doing. The only difference is that we believe that building a building is not necessary. In several cases, the incubation center of the university is about 3 miles away in a rented house. If the university has space, we compensate the university with rent. If the university does not have space, then the industry-academia joint project rents an office and we pay for electricity, air-conditioning, etc.

STEP: Do you think that the industry that is generating this revenue, which is the telecom industry, has a right to demand back some return for this money? Or, do you think those are two decoupled things?

QS: I think they gain a lot by wealth generation and improvement of standards in the country. If the improvement is more suitable to their goals, it’s even better.  So, as any entity we have to pay attention to our financier. Some of the thematic areas for research and development, for example, the center of excellence for telecom operations, are of interest to the telecom industry. There is also a significant probability that education through ICT will light up their network as a lot of that activity may have to happen through mobile phones.

STEP: The Fund’s vision states that you want to create a knowledge-based economy. Historically, economies have evolved from agriculture-based to post industrial-revolution industrial economies, and then recently to knowledge-based economies. In a sense, we are still largely an agricultural economy. Does it make sense to jump directly from an agricultural economy to a knowledge-based economy?

QS: I think there’s significant leap-frogging that’s happening today, for example, our land line connections are 4 million, and our mobile connections are 60, 70, 90 million depending upon what interpretation you go after. Like I talked about before, one of the key things that I really want to push for is to come up with scalable and sustainable solutions for delivering high quality education by using ICT technologies. That you can do without having to go through the industrial age.

Actually, I think a significant amount of technology management models have to be re-thought. I am not an expert on it, but when I hear statements from people who say that they are experts on technology management and technology transfer, and they go through traditional models, I tell them that tradition has been thrown out by telecommunications.

STEP: When you fund research, who owns the intellectual property (IP) that is produced?

QS: We own the IP. The Fund owns the IP. But, the grantee has an irrevocable and perpetual license to commercialize, further develop, sell, and productize the intellectual property. The only thing is that this license is non-exclusive; that is, the grantee cannot stop another party from using the developed technology. If somebody else wants this technology, we have to give it. But, realistically, our goal is to generate wealth in Pakistan. So, if you have taken the technology forward and created a significant company leveraging the developed technology, we are not going to — at least as long as I am the CEO — actively look for people who can use this software and bring you down. After all, we helped create your organization.

Future of the Fund

STEP: Do you think that the Fund is under some sort of risk or pressure to spend? And, if yes, where does the pressure come from?

QS: Oh yeah, we are very much under the pressure that we are not funding enough. This pressure comes from very well-meaning political managers, and I really mean well-meaning. A bureaucrat at a certain level stops looking at the process we are following and starts looking at key parameters from his macro view. And one of those parameters is the amount of funding that we are being able to disburse while satisfying the quality constraints. Similarly, from (the viewpoint of) political management a key parameter is the impact that we are creating.

STEP: So, is there a chance that the Fund might lose some of its funding and the money channeled somewhere else?

QS: Could be. But, I don’t think that’ll be a good thing to do because, if we were allowed to build buildings and buy equipment for a university, we could spend a billion rupees in six months. We could spend four billion rupees in 6 months.

STEP: What about some of the other directions that the Fund is taking? I know the Fund also has a scholarship program.

QS: Yes, we are funding 4-year scholarships for deserving students of rural area public schools. At this point, there are over a 1000 students in the program who are going through FAST, NUST, GIKI, COMSATS, IIU, and other universities. The students who entered the system in 2006 are becoming seniors now, and at least at FAST, since the first batch was only at FAST, they are at the top of the class.

STEP: What are some of the success stories of the Fund?

QS: One of the success stories that I am really proud of is the open-source software engineering course developed by Dr. Fakhur Lodhi at FAST-NU Lahore. In this course, the instructors select an open-source software, and the students become part of its support network. They have to either add a feature or fix a bug that the entire open-source community linked to that software has to accept.

The course has been a real success, so much so that this year a team from FAST got accepted at Google’s Summer of Code program (which is very competitive). Next year, their goal is that every kid who goes through this course to be accepted at Google.

Then there’s a project at FAST-NU Islamabad where they are working with lady health workers and they have developed the whole interface for neo-natal care. That has actually led to a briefcase-sized device which has equipment to measure temperature and blood-pressure, etc. This device has become so popular that a company that does work for UN and USAID throughout Africa and Asia wants to buy it.

Then, there’s HL7, Health Level 7. It is a standard for transferring medical data between applications. Its latest generation, which is probably version 3, is being developed at NUST in open source and already a lab in Pakistan has adopted it where they are using it to transfer data between their centers in Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi.

STEP: Are you hoping to get the Pakistani diaspora involved with the Fund?

Yes, absolutely. But a problem that I have at times with the diaspora is that they say ‘I make $150,000 a year, so if I give you my time will you give me a percentage of my salary?’

I go as far as saying, look we will get you a solution developed, and you build a Google on top of it and become a billionaire. We would not ask for a single penny back. But, for now, if you spend time in Pakistan, may be, we can compensate your time in Pakistan at a Pakistani level (but not beyond that).

STEP: Well, we hope that there’s enough good will for people to contribute voluntarily, be it as program managers or reviewers or mentors. Of course, they cannot be compensated based on their US salaries.  Thank you for your time. We hope that our readers will find this conversation just as interesting as we did.

QS: Thank you, for giving me an opportunity to share my thoughts.

Dr. Javaid Laghari appearing on Breakfast at Dawn today

Dr. Laghari also stated that human resource development will continue to remain a high priority for the HEC and the 2500 PhD scholars on foreign scholarships and 3500 scholars working towards their PhD in Pakistan need not worry about their scholarships being discontinued.

In responding to STEP’s question (communicated to the host via Twitter), Dr. Laghari stated that good policies of the past chairman will be continued, and the effort will be on improving whatever has been achieved in the past. In response to another question from STEP, Dr. Laghari said that rumors of the merging of HEC and the Ministry of Education are not true. Both have a role to play and they should work together for improving education in the country.

Overall, we at STEP are optimistic about the prospects of his appointment for higher education in the country, based on his responses. Oftentimes, there is a tendency on the part of a successor to undo all that has been achieved by previous administrators. Dr. Laghari was generous in giving credit to Dr. Ata ur Rehman but also pointed out some not-so-successful initiatives like the projects to build many universities with foreign collaborations. He implied that his role at HEC will be to build upon and improve what has been achieved in the past.

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.

STEP: Do you see the domain of the HEC decreasing in the future because of these delegations?

SN: No, because the problem that we work with is both large in magnitude and wide in spectrum. There is so much more that the world demands and these demands constantly evolve with the progress. Take quality assurance as an example. In the U.K., you have the Quality Assurance Agency, a huge independent entity that solely focuses on this issue. It is capable of carrying out research assessment exercises where it assesses research work and provides rankings. Development of quality assurance processes, ranking processes, and research assessment processes, etc. are performed by huge entities that have been developed around the world. Therefore, the HEC’s work will keep on increasing in the future. However, the HEC has to ensure that its main goal is to build the capacities within the universities so that when they are built then HEC can work as an external quality assurance mechanism or as a funding source.

STEP: You mentioned that the HEC is not involved with the colleges. Does the HEC see them as being beyond its mandate?

SN: Colleges are under the academic jurisdiction of the provincial governments. Therefore, they are legally and administratively beyond the HEC’s mandate. Colleges are directly tied to universities because they are affiliated with them and we do not want to shift this responsibility. But again, we can build the capacity of the university. Each affiliating university, such as Punjab University, has to basically become a mini HEC or become a quality assurance center for all of its colleges. They should take that responsibility. We have to build this capacity and we have started to move in this direction. Our first foray into this domain is trying to build distance education centers in these colleges to cater to private students, that is, those who are privately enrolled and are not looked after academically by these universities. These centers will enable universities to take care of these students in a proper manner. So this is an indirect way we are getting involved with the colleges.

STEP: Currently, there are two parallel streams of education in Pakistan; the madrassah system and the secular system. Do you think there is a way to merge these two streams into a common system?

SN: Absolutely! After all, such a system has previously existed in our history. Madrassahs have been a part of our history since the birth of Islam. I have visited the oldest Madrassah itself in Morocco and that is more than a thousand years old. I do not think there is any issue of the practical education not fitting into modern requirements. However, we should have a mechanism in our country, whereby a person coming through one system of education is not limited or barred from going anywhere else. So, we have to look at the courses that the madrassahs are teaching and that they are not teaching. If they are not teaching Mathematics or English or whatever that the policies of the country mandate to be taught, then the law needs to be applied to everyone. It is important for students to have the opportunity and the flexibility so that if they want to study jurisprudence they can, and if they want to study history then they also can. The basic idea is that the academia is open. We do not have closed universities and we do not have closed educational institutions. Everything that needs to be taught is open. These are the days of open courseware where everything is available through the Internet. The same openness must be applied to all education systems in Pakistan. If there is a madrassah curriculum, it needs to be put on a website, and it needs to be open to academic discourse just like courses at other universities. For instance, one can take an economic course at LUMS and ask questions concerning different issues, such as, why certain things are being done? what are the intended learning outcomes? and what are the pre-requisites? The rules of the game need to be the same; the quality assurance mechanism needs to be across the board. It is not a western concept to have quality assurance or openness. So I certainly believe that you can have a system that has the richness and the openness to have everyone involved and everyone’s point of view taken care of while also adhering to international practices of quality assurance.

STEP: Does the HEC plan to do something to unify these two different streams?

SN: This is not our domain of operation. As a policy domain we would say that this is something a university should consider. But the actual roots are down at the school level where this issue has to be sorted out and that is not in our domain.

STEP: Could you walk us through the making of a new policy at the HEC?

SN: Well, when a policy idea comes up, we typically set up a working group. Then depending upon the nature and the size of the problem we develop drafts and circulate them to the concerned people. They would bring changes to it, approve it or not, and then finally it goes to the commission for approval.

STEP: Do you have any mechanism for gauging ideas from academics?

SN: We are an open organization in the sense that everybody, each one of us, has email, and we are all required to respond to every single email that we get. In that regards, it is a very open system. In addition, university faculties have their own circles and groups, which they work within and ideas sort of come up. Policies are big things that the entire nation needs to be involved in. They can be localized, for example, we are trying to focus on and develop a sexual harassment policy for academia in Pakistan. So we’ll put something together, it will be widely circulated, and then it will brew up into something narrow. But again, it will still be broad enough to be applicable to every higher education institution in Pakistan.

STEP: This method of gauging ideas seems very informal. Do you think there should be a formal mechanism whereby academics could actively debate and discuss issues regarding higher education?

SN: It is not an informal thing in the sense that while the start (when someone comes up with an idea or identifies an issue to address) is informal, once the idea is there and it is decided that a policy should be developed, then it enters into the formal domain. There is a formal committee or task force constituted where we try to have maximum and most diverse participation. Then drafts are prepared, circulated, and put on the website. You first get input from everybody and then you go through the formal process.

STEP: So anybody can contribute to the policy making process at any time?

SN: Yes, there is no question of having it closed. Academia is open; that is the whole concept of academia.

STEP: The HEC has always endeavored to facilitate universities. Why do you think some faculty members have been resistant to its changes?

SN: Well, some of our policies were perhaps drafted in haste; we wanted to do a lot of things in a hurry and perhaps did not have as wide consultations as were required. So there were certain things that we were proposing that were felt as if they were not in the best interest of these people. It was a communication issue. Also, since we were talking about a lot of entrenched interests, we were disturbing the status quo, so an immediate reaction also came about at times. It was a mixture of things; we were partly at fault. Some of the faculty members were not ready for the change. I guess that is the nature of deal. If you want to bring about change then that’s what happens.

STEP: What is your vision for the HEC? What goals have you set for yourself for the next ten years?

SN: The vision and the goal is to build the institution of the HEC in such a manner that myself or any other individual becomes irrelevant. We want to build the processes that allow one person to go and another to come in while still maintaining a very strong and vibrant system. Another goal is to have a much greater and improved communication with the universities, the students, and the community at large. We want the entire system of higher education to view and accept the HEC as a partner in the development process of the higher education sector.

A very big challenge that we foresee is in terms of funding. This heavy reliance of public sector universities on government is not going to allow us to pull out of this narrow regime of availability of higher education that we are currently in. We have estimated the funds it would take us to maintain our current growth rate and that runs into trillions. And that’s not going to come from the government alone. So their [the universities’] capacity to raise funds and operate just like private universities, such as LUMS, needs to be developed and that will happen once the community starts taking interest in them. Once you get expatriate Pakistanis as well as local industrialists to work with these universities, the universities will get out of this mindset that the government is the only entity that can support them. Aligned with the financial systems is, building a safety net through enhanced equity in our higher education system. Even though we do not think so, we have basically somewhat of an elitist system of higher education, primarily centered on the big cities and catering to a certain class. Regardless of whether the tuition fees is a hundred rupees or five hundred rupees, living in Lahore or Karachi along with the cost of books and transport alone require financial means that are not available to most students. And what about the other areas? The secondary cities; even the suburban areas like Shahdara or Kala Shah Kaku. We need to spread the higher education institution across the country without sacrificing the quality and provide a much more equitable system so that those who need support are fully supported and those who do not need support also put in their fair share.

The final challenge is in terms of quality assurance; building the world class systems that are linked and have a direct relationship with their counterpart international organization so that we are recognized and our degrees and our systems are recognized.

Related Post: A Conversation with HEC Executive Director Dr. Sohail Naqvi: Part 1

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.

STEP: Coming to your work in the HEC, very few people managed to survive the change in government. How did you manage to survive the cut?

SN: That is a good question. I have felt that the true challenge to an organization is to move beyond the individual realm, which Pakistan seems to be suffering from, and to build an institution. The true test would be when we would survive an actual change in administration and see whether the HEC is an institution or just a bunch of individuals. So we all took that challenge very seriously. We had been working since the very beginning to institutionalize everything and we had done everything purely on merit. So we just had to buckle down and weather the storm and allow our work to speak for itself. And that is what has happened with the grace of God. We continued to work in an absolutely merit based manner and were not partial to any entity whatsoever and ultimately our work was recognized and we were supported by the new administration as well. Begum Shahnaz Wazir Ali has played a critical role in this transition and without her leadership we would not have survived the cut.

STEP: After the change in government, the HEC’s budget was drastically cut. I would like to congratulate you on having these budget cuts reversed recently. How did you manage to bring this about?

SN: It was actually a very long struggle. We had in fact been working with the World Bank for many years trying to convince them to support the government of Pakistan for the higher education sector. The World Bank had never given any budgetary support loan to any county in the world to support higher education; it had always been lower education or technical education. So we had to work long and hard with them to convince them of the successes of the HEC program and show that this is viable. That came through and helped the government to go over the budgetary shortfalls.

STEP: Do these loans from the World Bank come with any terms?

SN: The terms are financial in nature and do not have any policy implications. This is a budgetary support role, thus the World Bank is supporting the higher education program of the Government of Pakistan and is not funding any one particular initiative. The financial terms are soft and have a ten year grace period, thirty year repayment period and the interest rate is half a percent.

STEP: During your tenure at the HEC, what have been the HEC’s three biggest achievements?

SN: I think that probably the biggest achievement is bringing respect back to the university, through the university and the university faculty; the university as an institution being recognized by the country and its people as something to be proud of, to be nurtured and to be built. That, I think, is something to be proud of. The second would be the rebirth of research in our universities. Whereas universities were indulging in research in a sporadic, individual based manner, now they have taken on the research agenda with much more vigor, with an across the board response to it and this is something that the entire country is involved with. The third thing would be the introduction of a system of education that is compatible with the best in the world, which involved changing the bachelors and masters degree structure, restructuring the four year undergraduate program, introducing a course-based masters, and introducing a course-based PhD, so that the academic structure in Pakistan is compatible with the best structure that is practiced in the world. No Pakistani graduating now can feel that they have gone through a system that is inferior to anybody. The system is not inferior, the system is compatible. Now what matters is the work that you do.

STEP: Have these achievements had any tangible effects up till now?

SN: Most definitely there have been tangible results. We can talk about simple numbers, in terms of the number of students who are engaged in higher education in the country. This was estimated to be 2.6% of the youth population when the HEC started operation and it is now crossing 4.7%. Then, there are a number of disciplinary opportunities that are available to students. Five years ago when you completed an FSc degree in engineering and you did not get into one of the few engineering campuses, basically you had to sit back and figure out, “which college am I going to go to? What am I going to do?” Now it is a completely different scenario. If you’re coming from the IT stream, there is IT, computer science, and telecommunication, but you can also receive undergraduate degrees in physics, mathematics, etc. We have also been able to get people to voluntarily come back to Pakistan as academics. There were many Pakistanis doing PhDs abroad by themselves. They are now choosing to follow an academic discipline in Pakistan. We have a tenure track system, respectable salaries, and a good environment to work in the universities. People are coming back to our public universities and are taking teaching positions over here. In terms of research publications, Pakistan had on the order of 700 or so international publications per year throughout the 90s. In 2008, we crossed the 4000 mark in terms of publications. Just Quaid-e-Azam University alone, which is the number one research university in Pakistan, is crossing 500 publications in one year.

Then, in terms of quality assurance, [we have set up] the entire structure, the mechanism of quality enhancement cells, and accreditation councils. I mean, we never had any mechanisms for checking the quality of computer science programs in Pakistan. We had two year bachelor degrees, three year BCS, four year degrees, BITs, etc. I mean, you think about it, and a nomenclature in the structure existed. Today, we have a single four year undergraduate program. We have an accreditation council and we have a rating system, which is going ahead and checking programs. So in terms of quality, we are a far cry from where we were.

STEP: The HEC’s achievements that you listed are confined entirely to a very small percentage of the population. How do you think the HEC has positively affected society at large?

SN: I think with the society at large, our greatest impact has been on the parents, who are looking to provide university education to their children. We are not having a large impact on the policy-makers, which is where much more work needs to be done. That would mean much greater emphasis on the social sciences and the humanities, and continued capacity building of the faculty members, so that they take a leadership position with the development of policies. You see, universities should have an inherent leadership position in society. They are moving towards that and in some cases they have. I mean, when I switch on the TV and I see, for example, a sociology professor from NED [University] talking, it makes me happy that the media would come to faculty members and look at them as experts. But our society is very large and at a policy level you have got to understand that only one percent of the youth (17 to 23 years of age) or a little more are enrolled in universities. Ninety nine percent are not. Three to Four percent are in colleges, distant education (Allama Iqbal Open University), and other programs such as internal programs, etc. That would still leave 95% out of the loop. That is what is not being understood and that is the biggest battle Pakistan faces, the 95%; what are you going to do about that?

The work of HEC has begun to bring dignity back to our Institutions of higher learning. Society is looking up to them for leadership, industry is coming to them for talent and a solution to their problems. Some new breakthroughs are beginning to surface so the future looks bright.

STEP: But the 95% should also benefit from the HEC work. Shouldn’t research focus on local problems?

SN: Research should focus on local problems. That is something that needs to be done; Research needs to be locally relevant and it needs to be of an international standard. This is where I think that we need to do more work in incentivizing our faculty members to take up local challenges. For example, a manufacturing technology center was put up in UET Lahore, looking at the small to medium scale manufacturing industry that is concentrated in Lahore. An automobile center in Karachi, a date palm research center in Shah Abdul Latif in Khairpur, earthquake engineering machine center in Peshawar … are some examples of how HEC is supporting locally relevant research. But the faculty needs to be motivated to do that, and that requires more work.

STEP: Perhaps the HEC should restrict the research grants to research that focuses on locally relevant problems.

SN: You see there is a supply and demand issue. Pakistan’s problem, and this is something that one needs to really, really understand, is that of capacity. We just don’t have that many researchers, who are doing research. So of these people who are applying for research now, if you want to put in an additional constraint of forcing them to focus on local problems only, then you will have to define what is locally relevant and what is not. That appears to be an easy problem to solve but in practice it would be just about impossible. There are only degrees of relevance here. All research is relevant to Pakistan but the time frame in which it may impact local conditions is going to be different. But then this does not mean that you have to move away from this challenge of getting research to be locally relevant. Let’s say you need to work on the Thar coal fields. You need a large number of experts in various inter-disciplinary fields to actually focus on such problems. You have to understand that practical problems are extremely, extremely complex at times to address. Solving them at times requires you to have a very large team of experts which may not exist at any one university. What you can do and where universities can make a contribution, is to focus on development a little more; that means much more in terms of applied research. Let’s say there is a small factory producing some goods. It is possible to undertake a project to automate the factory units. Maybe you design software to speed things up, you look at the business processes – this is much more in the applied domain, which sort of gets out of the university domain. So this is a challenge in which each of us in the universities and academia has to ask ourselves that question of “how are we going to be relevant?”

STEP: How does the HEC plan to face this challenge?

SN: One thing we are doing in the social science domain is the introduction of thematic research, where themes are identified by groups of local experts, and this is something that we are also going to be introducing in the scientific fields. Our first goal was to get research going, to get people in that mindset – thinking and being inquisitive and innovative. Now, there is the question of starting to channel these resources so that there are, for example, technologists, who can look at food, agriculture, and ways of harvesting, [which is] one of the big areas of possible economic benefit in Pakistan. We could also start looking at issues of health for Pakistan and this has already started to happen. The Center of Excellence in Molecular Biology, for example, is looking at hepatitis and what we can do to locally manufacture interferons to treat this disease. Similarly, things are also beginning to happen in the direction of producing genetically modified crops for Pakistan. It is now necessary to take the next step, identify a number of themes and support research in those identified areas.

STEP: When do you think the common man will start seeing the benefits of this research?

SN: The common man has started to benefit. For example, this interferon developed by the Center of Excellence in Molecular Biology is ready for human testing. The problem is that the protocols for human testing in Pakistan are not yet well defined, since this is the first time this has happened. As soon as that happens, we are talking about millions of hepatitis infected patients being able to be treated by a medicine developed in Pakistan. Similarly, there are other products, and these days we are trying to put together an intellectual property portfolio for Pakistan, where we would categorize these [products] and try to get local or foreign investments going. The next challenge is to get research out of universities and into the industry domain. There are other interesting possibilities, such as salt-tolerant crops, which can be used as fodder for animals and can grow in millions of acres in Baluchistan. There are some vaccines that are being developed for animals, poultry, cows, etc., with huge benefits. So there is this kind of work which is beginning to show up, which is of commercial interest and will impact the common man. I am hoping in the next five year time-frame that these products, at least some of them, should be in the market.

STEP: A major challenge the HEC faces is the “elitist” quality of Pakistan’s higher education. How do you plan to face this challenge?

SN: Well, the way we are doing it is multi-pronged. We are taking higher education out of the main city framework so you have universities now in Malakand, in Hazara, in Sargodha, in Gujrat…so we have enlarged that domain. And we provided them with the latest IT technology so that they are linked. The other thing is this entire issue of a need based scholarship framework, in which we are providing scholarships and developing the capacity of need assessment so that you can actually identify who requires financial aid and who doesn’t require financial aid. The third path is the outreach path, where you are actively going into the rural schools or the suburban schools of Multan or Dera Ghazi Khan and building the capacity of students from the schools in these regions to take entrance examinations of top universities in Pakistan. All three approaches together are addressing the key issue of equitable access to higher education in Pakistan.

STEP: What were some of the policies or plans that did not do as well as you were hoping?

SN: I think the issue of governance has been the most difficult because, you may not know it, in the early days there was a great talk about the Model University Ordinance. There was talk about restructuring the existing universities and bringing in new governance structures. It was not accepted by the faculty and that was one of the areas where we did not make much headway. That is the only one I can think of at this time.

STEP: What about the HEC’s plan to build universities with foreign aid?

SN: Yes, that was another policy put in place much later, to build these mega universities. It is not on the table anymore. We have decided to scrap those projects and to rethink them and redesign these as well. They were too big and too ambitious, and if you combine that with the worldwide economic recession, then it is clear that the project is no longer viable.

STEP: One of the justifications for these mega-universities was that because of the PhD scheme we will have many PhDs returning to Pakistan without institutions to absorb them. Now that the mega university project has been scrapped, do you think we have the universities to absorb the incoming PhDs?

SN: The current fraction of PhD qualified faculty in our universities is hardly crossing 24% at this time. Three out of four faculty members do not have PhDs even currently. The student-teacher ratios are high and the demands are extreme. We have new campuses opening up, we have a rapidly expanding university system growing at a rate of about 15% per year. Now to cater to this growth of 15% alone would require an addition of about a thousand to twelve hundred teachers per year. So there is no shortage of capacity to absorb PhD qualified faculty in our universities. Also, as research is taking a hold in our universities, research groups in different areas are beginning to form in different institutions. This in turn feeds the demand for additional highly qualified faculty which is going to be available in the future.

STEP: So they will have jobs when they return?

SN: Yes they have jobs; in fact the HEC guarantees them a job. Any new PhD will be hired by the HEC for the first year if they cannot find a job; so that is not an issue.

In part two, we talk with Dr. Naqvi about the mandate of the HEC, the future of the organization, and how policies are crafted at the HEC.

Editor’s Note: Minor edits have been made to the article since it was first published.

Related Post: A Conversation with HEC Executive Director Dr. Sohail Naqvi: Part 2