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.

STEP: According to recent estimates, less than half of Pakistan’s population is literate, less than half have access to basic sanitation, and the economy is strangled by debt. In context of this, what is the social relevance and value of the modern university, with its emphasis on research and higher learning, in Pakistan today?

PH: Pakistan’s social indicators are indeed abysmal. But no country can wait for everything and everybody to get up to speed before making universities. Nor should it, because that would essentially mean waiting forever. But we should remember that there is a difference in the purposes that universities serve in countries like Pakistan, and in advanced countries like the US. The latter have knowledge-driven economies, and universities function as the engines of progress. They are the fountainheads of modern science, and of new technologies that have changed the world more in the past fifty years than the previous ten thousand years.

In Pakistan, our universities do not produce much new technology or ideas.  Nevertheless their graduates are necessary to keep the country going. Else the country would not have engineers, technicians, doctors, and administrators needed to run institutions, factories, businesses, and government.

There is another reason for a country to have universities – and this is quite independent of whether they produce state-of-the art research or not.  Universities are needed to create a modern citizenry capable of responsible and reasoned decision making. Their graduates should be able to think independently and scientifically, have an understanding of history and culture, create discourses on social and political issues, and be capable of coherent expression in speech and writing.

The fact that our universities do not measure well on this score is deeply regrettable. Yet, this suggests that we should strive to improve them, not eliminate them. At the same time, although buildings can rather easily constructed, Pakistan’s very limited intellectual resources put strong constraints on the number of actual higher education institutions that it can have.

STEP: Beyond their role as educational institutions, what is the value of emphasizing research, specifically theoretical and technical research, at universities in Pakistan?

PH: Research on the theoretical aspects of a subject is important for two reasons. First, genuine research, even if it is not cutting edge, makes the individual teacher much more aware of the state of the field and hence a better, more exciting teacher. Book knowledge becomes stale fast, particularly these days. Second, knowledge is advanced only through research, and Pakistan should play a role in this some day. India already is doing so, and Iran has begun to as well. Theoretical research is intellectually harder and more demanding than experimental research, and it consumes far fewer resources. Thus it should be strongly encouraged.

But since “research” is a widely abused term in Pakistan, some careful consideration of its meaning is necessary before attempting to evaluate its current importance in our universities. Research in any professional field — mathematics or physics, molecular biology or engineering, economics or archaeology — does not have a unique, precise definition. But a tentative, exploratory definition might be that research is the discovery of new and interesting phenomena, creation of concepts that have explanatory or predictive power, making of new and useful inventions and processes, etc. In the world of science, the researcher must certainly do something original, not merely repeat what is already known. Just doing something for the first time is not good enough to qualify as research. So, for example, one does not do meaningful research by gathering all kinds of butterflies and listing the number caught of each kind in a particular place at a particular time, etc. Nor does it come from making standard measurements, substituting one material after the other just because “it’s not been done before”.

We must recognize that very few Pakistani universities and their faculty currently have the capacity for real research. Nevertheless, they can still function quite well as knowledge transmitters. For example, some of Pakistan’s elite private universities have good teaching standards although they have few journal publications at this stage of their development. My feeling is that if a university teacher does not have the physical, material, or intellectual resources to do genuine research, it is far better that that person be made to improve his or her pedagogical practices as well as subject understanding. This is far better than churning out junk papers, which no one reads.

STEP: You have been a leading critic of some of the policies the HEC has initiated to address the state of research in Pakistan. Let’s say you are given Rs 21 billion (HEC’s 2009 budget) and stewardship of an organization with a mandate to reform universities in Pakistan. What would be the three most pressing items on your agenda and how would you go about instituting them?

PH: I would shift priorities drastically and emphasize improving the physical infrastructure of the 1000+ colleges rather than pampering a few public universities. Of the available money and effort, I would put 90% towards improving teaching quality at our public universities and colleges. Only promising research would be supported. Today’s atrocious teaching quality comes largely from having university and college teachers with very poor knowledge of their subject. Therefore I would call for the following:

1. Require that every applicant for lecturer or assistant professor, either at a public university or college, pass a relevant internationally administered examination (such as the GRE subject test if one is available in that field, else the GRE General Exam). The test would ensure that that person has enough basic knowledge to properly teach the subject. The applicant would also be required to give an introductory lecture, open to all who wish to attend, on a subject belonging to the applicant’s claimed field of expertise. The entire process of teacher selection needs to be made transparent and above board.
2. Create large-scale teacher-training academies in every provincial capital. Established with international help, these academies should bring in the best teachers as trainers from across the country and from anywhere in the world. A few master trainers might be willing to come from western countries in spite of the security situation, but hopefully attractive salaries might be able to lure some from India or from outside the Western world. These academies must be on the scale of a mega-project, say on the order of a billion dollars over 5 years. As high-quality institutions, they should have a clear philosophy aimed at equipping teachers to teach through concepts rather than rote learning, use modern textbooks, and emphasize basic principles of pedagogy, grading, and fairness. To be effective, they must be degree-awarding institutions.
3. Build on various current HEC initiatives such as foreign faculty hiring and scholarship schemes for university teachers. There are simply not enough qualified persons within Pakistan to adequately staff university departments. The fact that these schemes have been mismanaged by the HEC should not prejudice one against their potential usefulness if proper procedures and rules are adhered. Those selected for overseas scholarships should be required to clear an international subject test.

STEP: You note that “university and college teachers [have] very poor knowledge of their subject.” Yet, the scope of the teacher-training academies would presumably be pedagogical technique and not the outright re-education of teachers in their subject material. Is a multi-billion rupee investment in pedagogical training worth it, when subject proficiency seems like the fundamental problem?

PH: Thank you for forcing me to clarify. I very much have subject proficiency in mind. In fact, in the proposed new teacher training institutions I would give 90% importance to re-teaching subject basics and only 10% to pedagogy. So, in fact, teaching teachers “teaching-methods” is a very distant second priority. Let me say that those studying in these hypothetical NFAs (National Faculty Academies) would be relearning materials that they are actually supposed to know from their time in college or university. But there would be a crucial difference: this time they will be graded not by how much they have memorized but how well they are able to use what they have learned in order to solve problems. In science, knowledge is useful only if it is internalized rather than memorized. It must become part of your mental tool box.

There would be another important side benefit to having competent teachers. I am convinced that if a teacher knows his or her subject and is able to comfortably solve all or most of the problems at the end of a chapter, it would lead to important attitudinal changes. Some of the authoritarianism of teachers would surely go away. It is a fact that teachers often discourage students from asking questions because they know that their lack of understanding would be exposed. This is lethal for an academic environment.

STEP: Your proposal has a parallel to the erstwhile universities mega-project in that, rather than reforming and investing in existing universities, it recommends creating entirely new institutions. Why the inclination to create new academies instead of focusing resources and effort into reforming existing programs?

PH: Suppose you had inherited an airline company but no pilots. Would you like novices to take your planes up in the hope that they will learn flying that way? Of course not! Similarly we have entire universities, but with almost no people who are fit to teach in them. But they still teach, and nobody stops them. So although we don’t have crashed planes, we have armies of university students who graduated but didn’t survive their mis-education. Therefore, they could never become good scientists, engineers, economists, or whatever. In the hard sciences, I’d estimate that a miserable 20-30 percent of university teachers are actually qualified to teach — and I’m being generous.

To fix this situation, I just don’t know of any way other than training teachers in dedicated, specially created, teaching institutions where, at the end, they would be required to show proof through proper examinations that they’ve learned their subject well enough. It’s like a pilot certification requirement. If you don’t pass, you are not allowed to fly — or teach.

To respond specifically as to why we need new institutions: it’s because we just don’t have any teacher training institutions with anything close to the required intellectual capacity. It’s not about reforming something that presently exists but which is not good enough; nothing presently exists where college and university teachers can be adequately taught subject basics.

I might add one caveat: creating any good educational institution in Pakistan means that we will have to get at least some key people from other countries. Unless Pakistan stabilizes and deals with terrorism effectively, no persuasion will ever succeed in bringing them here. Or, perhaps, even expatriate Pakistanis. So this is a super-priority.

STEP: Why did you choose to return to Pakistan after your bachelors and masters degrees from MIT?

PH: Like some others of my generation, in the early 1970′s I was witness to the huge political upheaval in the US. American students were staging protests against their own government over its wrong and immoral war in Vietnam. Hitherto I had regarded politics to be a mere game and had barely any interest in these matters. As a naïve middle-class apolitical Pakistani youth, it seemed totally unbelievable to me that MIT students would be protesting against their own government and country — and that too when it was at war. There were huge protests, boycotts, and even occasional violence. I remember witnessing the violent protests against the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory on campus, which was involved in MIRVing nuclear missiles. It was so liberating for me to see people follow the dictates of their conscience. Now a part of the anti-war movement, I fully understood the ugliness of imperial power and participated in the teach-ins and sit-ins. The atrocities that the US was committing in Vietnam had made me so very angry that I did not want to live a day longer in America than was necessary to finish my degrees.

Then, closer to home, there was the slaughter in East Pakistan being carried out by the West Pakistani army. At the same time, there was a movement for social change in Pakistan that promised socialism and justice for the masses. It was initiated by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who brought revolutionary politics to Pakistan. What happened to him, and how he reneged on his promises, is another story but those were times of immense hope. I was one of the many overseas students who went back to Pakistan dreaming of changing everything, and of replacing feudalistic and capitalistic exploitation with socialism. So, with a job in hand at Islamabad University (QAU went under this name in the 1970′s) I joined up with others who had also recently returned and we became part of a workers movement in Rawalpindi, known as People’s Labour Federation. With another group of friends who were inspired by the idea of a peasant revolution, I became involved with working as a paramedic and school teacher in a remote Potohar village.

Part 2 is shared here.

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