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.

Perhaps equally impressive was the faculty that LUMS was able to assemble for this nascent school. It was a small — perhaps too small — group of promising young researchers, brought together by the project team to set the standard for LUMS SSE. Leading this group at the time was Dr. Asad Abidi, a professor at the Electrical Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Professor Abidi was born and raised in Pakistan and moved to England at age 16. After earning his B.S. from Imperial College London, he went on to complete his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981. Following a brief stint at the Bell Research Labs in New Jersey, in 1985 Professor Abidi joined the faculty at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.  An accomplished researchers and a pioneer in the field of RF CMOS design (the stuff that’s at the heart of our cell phones), Professor Abidi has won numerous honors, culminating with his election to the National Academy of Engineering, the highest professional honor accorded to American engineers for their life-time achievements.

In the summer of 2007, Professor Abidi went on leave from UCLA and joined LUMS as the first dean of SSE. There he played a pivotal role in setting the direction of the school. But, less than two years later, Professor Abidi was back at UCLA and at his home in the beautiful Pacific Palisades, California. That is where STEP Editor Bilal Zafar sat down with Professor Abidi to talk about LUMS SSE (Part 1), and much more (Part 2).

STEP: You were leading LUMS SSE when the first batch of students was admitted. In so far as the science and engineering universities are concerned, SSE’s process of student-induction was unique in Pakistan. What sort of students was LUMS SSE looking for in that first batch?

Asad Abidi (AA): We wanted to bring in students who could be groomed to be future leaders in science and technology, and who could influence hundreds of others. So, we handpicked the few who had a combination of things; academic excellence was not the only thing. Do they, for example, have passion? It’s too early to have passion for science – although some of them already demonstrated that – but do they have passion at all? Do they have leadership skills? Do they have a personality that could influence others? Do they have breadth in their intellect? So, we were looking for a personality and a total character that suggested entrepreneurship, leadership, and so on.

LUMS SSE is an intellectually elite institution and that was the basis for our selection criteria. Our aim was to focus this kind of very intellectually elite education on people who will have a 10x impact when they come out.

STEP: One popular criticism of LUMS SSE is that it might turn out to be a great institution, but it will be an institution for a few hundred people in a nation with 25 million people of university-going age. Can an institution like this really have an impact?

AA: It is too early to say, but it has a very clear precedent and model. And the model is institutions in the US like MIT or Caltech.

The idea was that each one of the students would be educated broadly and deeply in math and science or engineering, hopefully go on to do PhDs, then return to Pakistan or engage with it somehow to influence hundreds of others. That’s why we handpicked the few who had a combination of qualities.

At the first orientation, we told all the students, and their parents were sitting with them, that every one of you is going to make a significant change to Pakistan in the end.  You don’t know how yet. You may turn out to be a technical entrepreneur, start a high-tech company, you may turn out to be a world-renowned professor … we don’t know. But every one of you is going to have an impact, because that is our mission — to produce an entire generation of scientific and engineering leaders.

I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with focusing this kind of elite education on a small group of students. We cannot have every institution that is egalitarian; it’s just not possible.  There are many other universities in Pakistan that are egalitarian, and they do a fine job. Our argument is that there is room for one elite institution; a place at which people look and say, what are they up to? How do they teach the such-and-such subject? So, in terms of curricular innovation, bringing in research, and even administrative things like selection of undergraduates, LUMS SSE can be a trendsetter in Pakistan. So, I think there is room for one such institution.

STEP: Just one such institution?

AA: Yes, you can’t have two simply because there’s not enough faculty.  To have two world class institutions, you need two world class faculties. You can’t even get one together.

STEP: Harold Shapiro, former President of Princeton University, argues in his book “A Larger Sense of Purpose” that, in order to have a sound higher education system, you need strong interaction between world-class research universities in the country and other, less prestigious teaching institutions. To me, as an outsider, LUMS SSE comes across as if it exists in bubble inside Pakistan. For example, there are very few joint appointments between professors at, say, Quaid-e-Azam University or UET Lahore or NU-FAST or NUST and LUMS. Why is that?

AA: I completely agree that there has to be open communication with the whole community because, all the institutions that define the (higher education) eco-system play complimentary roles.

To your point about SSE “existing in a bubble”, I think it’s a little more complex than that. First of all, there is a lot of fear in Pakistan that, unless you are on guard, you’ll become mediocre. There is a history of erosion of institutions such as GIKI that had started with a bang. But, that does not mean that you put things in a bubble.  What it means is that, first, you build a critical mass that defines excellence and exemplifies it. Once you have the critical mass of faculty, then you can start engaging people from other institutions who come in and actually feel uplifted by their experience and their interaction. So, while SSE was going through this period of defining its culture as an institution, perhaps it came across as existing in a bubble.

Then, there are a lot of other factors which I’m not sure I want to go into too much. I’ll only say this much: there was a sense of elitism amongst the people involved in developing SSE, and I suppose you could argue that as long as it is intellectual elitism, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. But taken to extremes in the Pakistani milieu, elitism and over-zealousness can do damage. With the growth of the institution, I feel there is more maturity and less fear, less insecurity.

The fact of the matter is that the present faculty is so small that it is already stretched to the limit.  Next year, SSE would have three classes (freshman, sophomore and junior year) and at that point the faculty would have to bring in other people just to teach. So, I think that circumstances will force SSE to open up.  I was promoting some of this (while I was there), but at that early stage there was some opposition to this. My view was that you have to guard these fledgling institutions until this sense of excellence takes root, and once the institution knows where it’s going it should take others along with it.

STEP: Let’s get to the issue of sustainability. Can an institution like SSE sustain itself – financially as well as administratively — or will it be just a flash in the pan like many others?

AA: As of right now, it’s very hard to say. On the one hand, you can look at LUMS as an institution and say that it has been very resilient. Over the past 22 years it has only improved and, today, it enjoys a preeminent position in Pakistan. But that’s the business school, and more recently, social sciences and humanities; the Science and Engineering School is the newest addition. However, given the entirely different cultures, past success is no reliable predictor of the future.

The fragility at SSE, first of all, comes from its finances. Science instruction is an expensive enterprise. For science instruction you have to have building infrastructure, lab equipment, consumables and safety, etc., whereas in business instruction you need desks and computers. Also, SSE set a precedent by recruiting faculty with the promise that it could do publishable research, and that meant a lot of investment early on. This puts a large burden on the trustees to either give money themselves, or to raise large sums for SSE. They all come from the business background; they were involved with the business school, so perhaps one could argue that the trustees are still debating amongst themselves whether SSE is a good idea or not.  Or, at least a group among them feels that science can be real money drain with no short-term payoff, and I am sure this remains a subject of hot debate.

Administratively, the main issue is that of leadership. To run SSE, you need excellent leaders with great breadth of knowledge and experience in science research and teaching. The leaders must gain the trust and the respect of faculty, parents, students, and even government officials, because they have to interface with the government to get accreditation, funding, etc. They must also have the respect and credibility in the Pakistani academic community so that they can talk to their counterparts in other universities to show that SSE respects other institutions and wishes to bring everyone together as a community for mutual uplift. You need people at the top who do that job of being ambassadors and who really believe in it. But finding such leaders in Pakistan is very hard.

STEP: Just hard or impossible, at this point?

AA: It may be impossible.

STEP: Can’t you develop processes so that personalities become less relevant?

AA: I think it’s really hard to have well-impacted processes defined in fledgling institutions. There is just a lot of ad hoc stuff that you must do, and there is no precedence for what you may be trying to do. You can’t expect someone to come in and put in every conceivable process; it doesn’t work that way.  In new institutions, in my experience, you have to ‘wing it’, you have to improvise and much more importantly, you have to run it on enthusiasm more than on processes.  If the enthusiasm isn’t there at the beginning, people will just feel so fearful of their small numbers and the huge task ahead that they will slowly withdraw. So, you have to pump up a lot of enthusiasm in people; processes emerge in due course. This is why good leadership with relevant experience is important.

STEP: So, then, how can SSE make sure that it remains a strong institution without the kind of leadership you described?

AA: I think they have to become largely leader-independent. The faculty at LUMS is, on the whole, very sensible and mature. Their collective wisdom has to drive the institution, pretty much independent of who is at the top.  For example, if anyone sees a little conflagration coming up, it should be everybody’s business at LUMS to diffuse it.  That’s the only way to survive and I think there is some of that sense of ownership now developing. I think SSE’s Computer Science group, being large and having survived some adversities in the past, can point the way and say to the newly formed groups, ‘look, these little disputes or fears’ — and, by the way, all fighting within universities is over the most trivial of things  –  ‘have no basis and let’s remain focused on our bigger agenda’.

It takes a certain maturity and I worked pretty hard with the faculty to try to make them feel that as a group, as a collective decision-making body, they are very strong and that they can draw upon the traditions of LUMS — of resilience, improvement and excellence – and march on. I said to the faculty: name me the last three presidents of, say, Harvard University or some other famous university?  You won’t know them because they are in the background; what’s in the forefront is the faculty. I think they understand pretty well the need for this communal sense and shared responsibility. 

You see, Pakistani institutions are very fragile. Whether it’s a hospital or a charitable organization, they can fall apart when the right person walks away or dies or whatever.  Everything just hangs on a thread. We have to get beyond this; I mean, will the Edhi trust survive Edhi?

It shouldn’t be like that. Pakistan should take pride in its good institutions. People should say: here is an institution worth saving and we want it to get better next year, not worse. Those inside the institution should commit themselves; those outside it, the same. Parents should say, we want LUMS to get better regardless of who is it at the top, or whether its funds run out, because SSE is giving our children an opportunity we didn’t imagine was possible in Pakistan. People should say, look, of all the places in Pakistan doing science and engineering teaching and research, you guys are doing an excellent job, you must continue to do that; we are counting on it! That’s the kind of sentiment it takes to sustain an institution like the SSE.  But we have to be a little more mature as a society and understand that that’s how countries preserve their institutions. It takes a lot to keep these valuable things going.

STEP: But, a few years ago, a number of faculty members (around five) left LUMS. Do you feel that it has happened for the last time?

AA: I do not know all details, but I do have some idea of the problems that caused the departure. Basically, it was problems festering that were not tended to in time. When problems fester, they just get messier and messier. That is when leaders should step in and defuse the crises. But, I think these are inevitable growing pains in a Pakistani institution.

The important thing is that it should never happen again … because once is enough. This is why when I was at LUMS I told everybody to look at the mistakes of the past and pledge not to let them happen again… for the sake of the institution.  I very much hope that it was the last mass departure, because if the institution starts to hemorrhage its faculty, even if it loses just one or two people, things can unravel very quickly. And, that’s what I think everyone has to be on-guard for.

STEP: Final question on this topic of SSE: what is your advice to the people at LUMS?

AA: My message to the faculty at SSE is: you are the force, you are the institution. You are experienced, you are teaching at a world class university, you are doing great research in Pakistan, you just need to pull together and say, this is our institution, this is what we are fighting for and this is what we are building it for. You are the one who define this institution, and you will continue to bring fame to it. You are at the front-line, delivering a powerful tool (or, should I say, weapon) to the best of Pakistani youth to build a better future: a high quality, liberalizing, deep, higher education.

In part two of our conversation with Dr. Abidi, we talk about funding for higher education — can the current levels be sustained and why the industry is not investing more — and what Pakistanis abroad can do to help. So, stay tuned!

“We argue instead that educational attainment and higher income increase political dissatisfaction, such as dissatisfaction with one’s government or foreign policy, when holding all other factors constant. We also argue that politically dissatisfied men and women are more sympathetic to suicide bombings.”

Their study is based on data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project. The following question from the survey was used:

Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets [in our country] are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?

Slightly over half of the Pakistani (50.4%) respondents to the survey never consider suicide bombings of civilians justified, and, somewhat surprisingly, 60.4% think that  suicide bombings of Westerners in Iraq are never justified. When broken down according to educational attainment, the percentage of Pakistanis who believe suicide bombings are never justified against civilians are: 43.7% of Pakistanis with below primary education, 54.4% of Pakistanis with primary education, 56.6% of Pakistanis with secondary education, and 63.4% of Pakistanis with higher education. A similar negative correlation is seen between wealth and support of suicide bombing.

With respect to Pakistan, the authors conclude:

“The basic and extended models … offer no statistical evidence that educational attainment matters. The extended model provides some evidence that compared to the poorest respondents, upper-middle income respondents in Pakistan are less likely to support suicide bombing against Westerns in Iraq.”

and that,

“Respondents in Pakistan with primary education are more likely to be politically dissatisfied than those without primary education.”

Despite the lack of consistent indicators that span the Muslim public, the study concludes with two broad policy recommendations.

1. The first recommendation is to continue the expansion of ‘peace’ education. They note: “The purpose of such education would not be to reduce political grievances that can be very real but to suggest other ways to bring about change that cause less suffering and damage to society… This, however, may be too much to ask from some of the more oppressive regimes and the narrow elites that lead them.”
2. The second recommendation is somewhat less well defined: “The present dissatisfaction … can be reduced if governments of Muslim countries, U.S., and other Western states adopt policies that respect the dignity, welfare, interests, and lives of Muslims everywhere”. They recommend taking steps to reduce political dissatisfaction, such as supporting trade, economic integration, and cooperative international security.

I’ve seen the transition from old to the new management. The old management (under Dr. Javaid Laghari) made SZABIST what it is today and the new management is making substantial improvements that were overlooked by the previous management. One example of these improvements is the attention (that the new administration is paying) to research and development. This will not only bring SZABIST to international university standards, but will also provide the nation with breakthrough technologies and solutions.

As a student, I’ve extensively benefited from the research and development work taking place at SZABIST. It gave me the opportunity to become an academician and utilize my potentials to the utmost. So, it would be naïve to say that SZABIST was dependent on Dr. Javaid Laghari, and in his absence the university would collapse. If SZABIST was a “one-man show”, as Dr. Usmani suggests, then it would have not survived, let alone thrived, after the departure of Dr. Laghari. It would have collapsed by now! But we don’t see any debris, do we?

Instead, we see SZABIST with multiple, diverse disciplines and fully functional R & D. The reigns of SZABIST are in the right hands and, insha’Allah, very soon some great projects from SZABIST will materialize, making this institution a novelty among Pakistan’s top universities.

Finally, I would like to make an earnest request to all the authors, journalists, essayist, columnist and such to verify information in their articles before submitting for publishing.

Jaya S. Loungani
Research Officer, MEPIC Study Center,
Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, Karachi

As soon as I realized that I was going to graduate in Fall 2009, I started sending out my resume to prospective employers in Pakistan. I started telling the world, ‘Look, I am young, energetic, full of ideas, and I have a PhD. I would like to improve (almost) everything. Hire me!’ So, with a beard on my face and “all the single ladies” tone on my blackberry, I returned to my homeland with the hope that I would get my dream job in few days, and will live happily ever after. Little did I know that what would follow was a time to make tough decisions and to re-explore the definitions of “higher education” in Pakistan.

I traveled to 13 cities, appeared in 35 interviews, and received 26 job offers. Academia, private companies, government organization, and NGOs — I explored every opportunity that I could. The majority of my interviews were at universities, and this is what I would like to share here.

For me, a university needs three things to survive and progress: teaching, institution-building, and research. I believe that everyone in Pakistan is doing a decent job in teaching. Of course, some are better than others and there is always a room for improvement but thanks to HEC’s syllabus recommendations, at least we know what we are supposed to teach.

There is a gap in institution building. Most universities in Pakistan are dependent on one person; if that person was removed, the whole institute may collapse. For example, what comes to your mind when we say Dr. Javed Leghari, Dr. Arshad Ali, Dr. Wahab, and Dr. Naveed Malik? SZABIST, NUST SEECS, MAJU, and Virtual University. We need to produce clones of these fine individuals – a lot of them – so that the institutions can survive for the next 100 years, and more. But, I don’t find myself educated or experienced enough to play that role as yet. I was just a student a few weeks ago and now, all of a sudden, I am an “expert” on everything? I totally disagree.

For now, I want to do research, and write proposals for funding. Very few people in Pakistan are correctly doing that, and I want to add value in that area. I also wanted to join an institution that gave me ample time to work on my projects. That means having a reasonable teaching load and limited administrative responsibilities.

There are several other interesting problems that one has to face after coming back to Pakistan. For example, during my interview process, the registrar of a well-known university told me that I would have more value if I had graduated from Karachi instead of Khairpur, and if I was born in Karachi instead of Sukkur. In another instance, my interviewer told me that I can only publish in HEC-recognized journals in ‘W’ category (I have no clue what that is), and everything else is useless. I tried my best to explain to him that we have quite a few reputable conferences in computer science, with the acceptance rate as low as 5%, but he wasn’t ready to listen. He told me that if I don’t have an Impact Factor of at least 5 (again, based on HEC recognized journals’ list) I won’t qualify for “HEC-approved PhD Supervisor” and he won’t hire me.

Government organizations have a totally different hiring style. You have to get an application form from a particular officer, fill-it-out with black ink, make 7 copies, attach 9 photographs and 8 CNIC copies duly signed and attested by a first class magistrate in the city court, and submit it via postal service with the demand draft of Rs 200! Well, I do not have patience to do all that, so I gave up after applying to a few places. Another issue with the government organizations is the salary package and the only perk they usually offer is the “permanent” position.

Private universities offer high salaries and good incentives packages; smaller universities pay the highest amount. For example, a fresh PhD can get an excellent salary package and directly become an associate professor (skipping the assistant professor position) or even the Head of Department somewhere in rural Punjab or interior Sind. The salary is between Rs 40, 000 and Rs. 80, 000 for Masters, and Rs. 80, 000 and Rs. 200, 000 for PhDs. Universities with good working and research environment usually pay far less from what you can get at a relatively new setups.

The problem I had with small private institutes is twofold: first of all, they have totally unrealistic expectations. They think that after returning from the U.S, you have a magic stick that can use to turn their institutes into LUMS in no time, and you alone can do all the work. The second problem is one’s personal and professional growth. There is very little hope of doing original research after being bombarded by unprofessional and entirely commercial interests of the management. In one instance, my employer told me, that he is not hiring me to teach, or “do some research that [he] cannot understand” because he had several “low-salary individuals who can do that.”

The teaching load in most of the universities is another issue. In one instance, I was requested to teach 12 credit hours per semester (4 courses), be an advisor to a batch of 113 students, be the convocation manager, and I was expected to spend 40% of my time on administrative work.

After going through this prolonged exercise, I came to the conclusion that there are very few places where I can work while surviving the reverse cultural-shock; places that offer a good working environment, have professional ethics, and understand the needs of a young researcher. GIK Institute turned out to be a good choice for me. GIKI makes landing very smooth for returning scholars. Pay is good, and teaching load is very reasonable (two courses every semester and summer teaching is optional). Perks include a free 5-room luxury apartment, schooling for kids, medical center, including the cost of diagnostic tests and medicines, internet, campus-wide telephone, and house maintenance (you will know how big a blessing it is when you have to find a plumber in Karachi). The location has its own charm; pollution-free environment and a quiet and secure campus. Furthermore, there is a lot of space for your own research lab. GIKI also gave me a seed funding to start my research center. So, for me, GIKI turned out to be the best choice. For others, especially those who might have their homes in major metropolitan cities and don’t have to pay a hefty monthly rent, other universities may be a good option as well.

While I am learning the ropes of my new job, I would like to leave the readers outside Pakistan with one request: In the end, this is our country, it deserves to be better, it can be better, and we will make it better. Please return to your homeland. We need a lot of you to synergize our efforts for a prosperous Pakistan. Amen!

Dr. Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani is an assistant professor in the faculty of Computer Science at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Science and Technology. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.

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.

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

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

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

SYNOPSIS (We will continue to compile the synopsis of the discussion as it progresses: Last Update 8:02am EDT, September 22nd, 2009.)

The metrics suggested, thus far:

1. QUALITY OF RESEARCH (Editors, Zeeshan Khan): Citation and variants on their measures like the h-index, are standard measures of research quality on an individual, institutional, and national level. Number of patents is another measure, though .
2. QUANTITY OF RESEARCH (Atta-ur-Rahman): This measures gross research activity.
3. QUALITY OF TEACHING (Pervez Hoodbhoy): Metric?
4. QUALITY OF UNIVERSITY GRADUATES (Pervez Hoodbhoy, Fakhruddin Habiby): Surveying employers or assessing performance in international tests.
5. ACADEMIC FREEDOM (Pervez Hoodbhoy): Metric?
6. ACCESS TO UNIVERSITY FACILITIES (Atta-ur-Rahman, Khurram Shafique): Libraries, laboratories, internet connectivity, communication facilities, sports facilities,
7. EVALUATION BY NEUTRAL EXPERTS (Atta-ur-Rahman): Survey of a group of neutral experts, like the World Bank, USAID, etc.
8. UNIVERSITY ENROLLMENT (Atta-ur-Rahman): The increase in university-going adults can be measured by census.
9. UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY LINKAGE (Fakhruddin Habiby, Anwar): The number of industry supported projects which were initiated with University-Industry partnerships and their effectiveness based on industry feedback.
10. LOCAL RELEVANCE OF RESEARCH (Editors): Metric?
11. QUALITY OF CURRENT STUDENTS (Pervez Hoodbhoy, Khurram Shafique):  Performance in standardized tests conducted every year, performance in local and international competitions such as Mathematics Olympiads and Programming Contests.

Notes:

(Pervez Hoodbhoy) Self-citations are a serious problem when using citations as a metric for measuring quality of research reform. [paraphrased]

(Abdullah Sadiq) While strengthening the research effort in the universities is important, the most urgent need is to concentrate on producing quality teachers for the lower tears of education. [paraphrased]

(Khurram Shafique) A pedestrian publication in the field of networking or multimedia is likely to receive more citations than a good publication in a less explored field in mathematics, say, non-standard analysis.

(Fakhruddin Habiby) another ‘tool’ that is used to push the citation number higher is formation of ‘citation-coalition’ within research groups.

(Omar Javed) Categorization of universities into subsets, and adoption of relevant performance criteria for each subset. Three fundamental questions: what is taught (Undergraduate and Graduate Instructional Program classifications), who are the students (Enrollment Profile and Undergraduate Profile), and what is the setting (Size & Setting)”

(Shafiqur Rehman) …the success or falure or HE reforms must only be judged by opinion of the common stake-holders (students, teachers and administration) of the public sector universities.

(Affan): we need to tweak ratings/rankings such that we are able to measure any progress happening in Pakistan, progress small enough that it is not lost by existing metrics.

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

1. Firstly, Dr. Hoodbhoy himself admits that there has been a huge increase in international publications at QAU after HEC came into existence when he mentions the number of international publications in the two time periods. Strangely, he picks a six year period, 1998-2003, and then compares it with the subsequent 4.5 years (?) , 2004 to mid 2008, (the correspondence occurred in August 2008, so he could not possibly have had access to the figures for the entire year) I can only assume that he has mentioned 2003 by mistake in the second “5 year” period as there is no reason to include the publications of the year 2003 in both time periods, which he has done. It is clearly unfair to take two time periods of different durations and compare them.
2. In the first 6 year period (1998-2003), Dr. Hoodbhoy admits that there were only 631 research publications from QAU, but in the second 4.5 year period these had risen to 1482 research publications, a tripling of publications on average per year, even by his own estimates.
3. As the HEC programs began in 2003 and their real impact occurred 2-3 years later, a year-wise comparison is far more relevant than an average over a 5 year period as the dramatic change that has occurred gets partly masked when a 5 or 6 year average is taken, though it is still very visible. Dr. Hoodbhoy ignores the figures that Dr. S.T.K. Naim had worked out that in the year 2004, there were only 84 research publications from QAU (an average of only 7 publications per month), but by 2008 they had increased many fold.
4. The citations argument used by Dr. Hoodbhoy is invalid as citations increase with the passage of time. Dr. Hoodbhoy, therefore, wrongly compares the citations of papers of an earlier period with those of a later period. To clarify this issue further, if two papers of equal quality and in a similar field are published, say in 1998 and 2007, and the citations of both are counted in 2008, then the paper which was published in 1998 will have accumulated more citations by 2008 because of the much longer 10 year time period, than the paper published in 2007, as that would have had only one year for the citations to accumulate. Dr. Hoodbhoy is therefore comparing apples with oranges when he tries to compare citations of papers published in an earlier period with a later time period. In order to fairly compare citations, the same duration of time period must be taken. Thus if one takes 1998 publications and counts the citations till 2008, then one will need to take the 2008 publications and count their citations till the year 2018, before one can compare the figures for the citations of the two sets fairly.

The undeniable fact is that the total number of research publications from universities in Pakistan was only about 600 per year till 2001 but then started rising rapidly, and by the year 2008 it had increased to over 4,300! Brazil achieved such an increase over a 35 year period between 1960 to 1995, which Pakistan achieved in only 6 years. After my appointment in March 2000 as the Federal Minister for Science and Technology in Pakistan, I convinced the government to enhance the budget for science and technology in Pakistan by 6000% between July 2000 to October 2002. After my appointment as Chairman, Higher Education Commission (Federal Minister) the budget for higher education was similarly increased by 2400% during 2003 to 2008. Major achievements during these periods were:

1. Establishing 51 new Universities and awarding institutions during 2002-2008,
2. Tripling university enrollment (which had reached only 135,000 from 1947 to 2003) to about 400,000 in 2008,
3. Establishing a powerful Digital Library which provides free nation-wide access to every student in every public sector university to 45,000 textbooks/research monographs from 220 international publishers as well as to 25,000 international research journals,
4. Establishing video-conferencing facilities in most public sector universities that allow lectures to be delivered live and interactively to students in Pakistan from technologically advanced countries
5. Enhancing salaries of academics so that salaries of University Professors were increased to a level about five times the salaries of Federal Ministers, with a corresponding reduction in tax from 35% to only 5%, in order to attract the brightest young men and women into academia,
6. Promoting research through a massive research grant program which resulted in a 600% increase in ISI abstracted publications from about 600 per year in 2001 to 4300 research publications in 2008, accompanied by about 1000% increase in international citations in the same period,
7. Placing a satellite in space (Paksat-1) which is now used for distance learning by the Virtual University,
8. Establishing video-conferencing facilities in most public sector universities and initiating a lectureship program, allowing live interactive lectures to be delivered from technologically advanced countries,
9. Providing free access to scientists/engineers anywhere in the country to sophisticated instruments installed in any institute in Pakistan.

The Bottom Line: In the final analysis, it is not what I or Dr. Hoodbhoy think about the developments, but what is the opinion of neutral international experts who have carried out detailed year-long reviews of the developments during the period that I was heading the Higher Education Commission. A few extracts are given below:

1. Prof. Fred Hayward (independent international educational consultant from USA) carried out a detailed analysis of the developments and published an article entitled “Higher Education Transformation in Pakistan: Political & Economic Instability,” Date: Number 54, winter 2009 Source: International Higher Education Quarterly. I quote: “The news about Pakistan over the last few years has been dominated by reports of political turmoil, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, economic decline, and the Afghan War. What has been missed is the phenomenal transformation in higher education over the last six years, which represents a critical development for Pakistan and a potential engine for growth and national recovery.”
2. Report of US-AID about HEC states that “We are very impressed with the breadth, scope, and depth of the reforms implemented by the HEC since 2002.  No other developing country we know has made such spectacular progress.”
3. World Bank Report is very complimentary of many excellent programmes introduced.
4. British Council: The report states: “I have worked in many countries in South America, the Middle East, North Africa, and in Russia and India, over the last six years.  None in my view, with the exception of India, has the potential of Pakistan for the UK university sector, largely because of the dynamic, strategic leadership of the Chairman of HEC”.
5. Nature: Several articles and editorials have appeared in the world’s leading science journal “Nature”  (the most recent in the issue published on 3rd September 2009) in which the very significant progress made by Pakistan in the higher education sector has been applauded and the need for the new government to built on the solid foundation laid has been stressed.
6. Science Watch (Thomson Reuters) has ranked Pakistan as a rising star in five disciplines, more than in any other country of the world.

Join the Discussion!
What are the correct metrics to measure higher education reform in Pakistan?

Related Posts:

1. Nature’s Coverage of Higher Education Reform in Pakistan: A Response from Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy
2. Nature’s Coverage of Higher Education Reform in Pakistan: A Conversation with Athar Osama
3. Pakistan’s Higher Education Funding Holds Many Lessons for Developing Nations: Nature

Editors Note: Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman is a leading scientist and scholar in the field of organic chemistry from Pakistan. He has served as the Federal Minister for Science and Technology, the Federal Minister/Chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Science and Technology, and the President of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman is credited by many for reviving the higher education and research practices in Pakistan. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.

Unfortunately, I find the response as unsatisfying as the original article. Since Nature is unwilling to accord me a chance for a satisfactory reply on its pages, I shall clarify the basis of my criticism in some detail here.

In the said article, strong conclusions have been derived from weak data. The authors have not dared to ask the basic questions whose answers are essential for ascertaining whether there has been actual progress in Pakistan’s higher education system and, if so, by how much. Instead, in giving a thumbs-up, numbers have been quoted that have doubtful significance. Take, for instance, the claim that:

“In mathematics, for example, an average paper by a Pakistani author is cited around 20% more than the worldwide average for the discipline”.

Before returning to what some of the right questions might have been, let me give two reasons why the above claim – even if true – carries little meaning.

First, self-citation is a far more serious problem than the authors are willing to acknowledge. It is also one that they admit to not having investigated. The data on Pakistani research papers shows that subtracting out self-citations drastically cuts down on actual citations – there are often 2-3 self-citations for every real one! The reader is urged to carefully study my email correspondence of last year with Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman (see appendix below) who, at the time when he was HEC chairman, had made similar claims that I disputed as being false. To interested readers, I have made available (in pdf form) the Thomson Scientific data that I have quoted in my correspondence here (1998-2003) and here (2003-2008).

Second, many authors of the relatively more cited mathematics papers from Pakistani institutions are not Pakistani nationals. High salaries offered to foreign faculty by the HEC brought to Pakistan a large number of well established mathematicians on short-term contracts from Russia, Poland, Ukraine, and China. This was probably a good thing to do – in spite of the difficulty they had in communicating in an alien language and their consequent inability to teach well. Their papers, however, do not reflect mathematics in Pakistan. One sees a similar phenomenon in Saudi Arabia where foreigners are principally responsible for the kingdom’s large number of papers and citations.

In my opinion, instead of focusing on marginal matters, serious research on the state of Pakistani higher education, and of changes therein, would have first established appropriate metrics, and then sought answers, to the following key questions:

1. What is the quality of teaching in Pakistan’s public universities? There is often only a weak correlation between formal qualifications and subject competence, so simply counting PhD degrees is not very helpful in answering this. Far too frequently one sees professors of English who cannot speak or write a single sentence of grammatically correct English, physics professors who are stymied by Newton’s Laws, and biology professors whose knowledge is frozen in some pre-Darwinian age. But does such basic incompetence exist at the 20, 50, or 70 percent-level? Higher? Lower? What evidence exists that the HEC’s reforms improved the situation?
2. Is there evidence that there has been improvement in the selection process for students in public universities, or that of the quality of their graduates? Proof of the latter, judged by asking employers or assessing performance in international tests, would be a clinching argument for the success of HEC reforms.
3. Do campuses enjoy greater academic freedom, more seminars and colloquia, less violence by extremist campus groups, a pleasanter and more relaxed ambiance, and greater transparency in faculty selection? Surely these are critical to any reasonable assessment.

To get answers to questions like these requires extensive field work, and I certainly do not fault the authors for not doing this. But I was surprised that the Nature article, as well as the lead author’s response, merely says that the HEC’s experiment had critics, without citing any specific articles or the substance of those criticisms. There is not even a passing reference to the failed nine-university multi-billion dollar mega-project, tons of unused scientific equipment purchased for unknown reasons, dubious attempts to fund “Quranic Science” (that had to be hastily abandoned after the scheme was exposed), and the explosion in academic corruption set off by per-paper payments. Surely, these should not be brushed aside as “collateral damage”. In another country, those who massively squandered public money would have been thoroughly investigated by independent commissions, not praised for small things.

The Bottom Line: Well-functioning universities are the products of a complex organic and evolutionary process that is internal to a society. Money and facilities matter, but it is much more important for a university to have a forward looking world-view, an open environment, high ethical standards, a sense of collegiality and shared sense of purpose, and good governance practices. Sadly, the Nature article did not even mention these as significant.

Join the Discussion!
What are the correct metrics to measure higher education reform in Pakistan?

Related Posts:

1. Nature’s Coverage of Higher Education Reform in Pakistan: Comments by Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman
2. Nature’s Coverage of Higher Education Reform in Pakistan: A Conversation with Athar Osama
3. Pakistan’s Higher Education Funding Holds Many Lessons for Developing Nations: Nature

Editors Note: Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy is a well-known Pakistani nuclear physicist and political-defence analyst. He is the Professor of High Energy Physics, and the head of the Physics Department at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. Prof. Hoodbhoy is a vocal critic of HEC’s policies and their impact. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.

This correspondence between Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman and Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy is reproduced below with consents from both parties. It is exclusively concerned with a public matter, has no private content, and is largely focused upon the importance of self-citations.

Dear Dr. Pervez
I have probed into the situation at QAU, and it is quite the opposite of what you claim, as evident from the total publications and the total number of citations, as per above attachments. The HEC was established in October 2002. The funds started coming through from July 2003. The subsequent impact of HEC programs on research publications and citations is indeed amazing. In 2004 the number of publications was only about 120—by 2007 it has risen to about 380—a 300% increase! The citations in 2004 were about 800—-by August 2008 they have increased to about 2200 although we still have 4 months to go before the year ends—I suspect that it will be about 3200 by the end of the year—a 400% increase!

I shall be separately sending you a report after removing self-citations. QAU is also now included in the most cited institutions in the world (please see attachment)—-this was not to 4 years ago.

Please be fair and objective in your assessments. We may have made some mistakes, but much good has happened.
Kind regards
Atta

Dear Dr. Pervez
Following my other email to you this morning, I am now enclosing the citations of QAU after removing self-citations.As you would see, these have risen from only 84 in 2004 to 1413 in 2008 (with still 4 months to go). These will probably be around 1900 by the end of the year—a spectacular ten-fold growth! Dr. Naim has kindly had these searched, so if you have any queries about them, you may like to interact with her. She tells me that the situation is similar in many other universities—a long period of stagnantion
during the 1990s followed by a burst of activity in the last 4-5 years.
Kind regards

Atta

Dear Dr. Atta,

I am sorry about the late response to your three emails. First, thank you for doing whatever you did – the HEC’s notification of 14 July 2008, which specifies 40 percentile as the GRE passing marks, finally reached QAU departments today (without comment from the administration). In these times one has to be grateful for small things…

Regarding your email and the numbers cited therein: I can understand that you would like to feel upbeat about QAU having improved itself as a result of massive infusion of HEC resources. I too would very much like good things to happen, but perhaps one should not allow wishes to become conclusions.

Looking at the data that you had sent me and your inferences, I decided to do a little independent investigation using exactly the same database (ISI Web of Science) and exactly the same keywords (see attachments to this email). Here are the findings:

Period: 1998-2003
Number of papers published by QAU authors in the above period: 631
Number of citations to date: 4540
Number of citations to date with self-citations removed: 2,817

Period: 2003-2008
Number of papers published by QAU authors in the above period: 1482
Number of citations to date: 3667
Number of citations to date with self-citations removed: 1258

Some obvious inferences:

1. There is absolutely no evidence of real citations having increased; if anything, the numbers up to now show the contrary. While the number of real citations of papers published 2003-2008 may increase somewhat with time, currently they are quite a bit less from the earlier period when the HEC and your incentive system did not exist. Please remember that citations are cumulative over years. I have tried to use exact descriptions in the figures cited above. If I am wrong in any detail, or if I have missed something essential, I would like to be corrected. Unfortunately the data does not at all support your rather optimistic remark of “a spectacular ten-fold growth!”
2. The above data also indicates the disturbing fact that most of the time QAU authors cite themselves. Subtracting self-citations drastically cuts down on real citations – there are 2-3 self-citations for every real one!. Looking more minutely at the ISI pages, one also notes that many citations are by other members belonging to the same or other QAU departments. So the number of genuine citations gets cut down even beyond the numbers quoted above (2817, 1258)!

Just to get scales right, here are a few citation numbers from the Stanford Spires data base for Pakistani physicists over the length of their careers:
a) Riazuddin: 1479
b) Ahmed Ali (DESY, Germany): 9873
c) Abdus Salam: 14103

3. You are correct that the number of publications over equal (5-year) time periods has more than doubled relative to pre-HEC times. But this is clearly in response to the monetary incentives offered by PCST/QAU. A publication fever now grips our universities. It is difficult to defend the case that the number of papers published is proportional to the amount of research done.

You are, of course, free to have the data I have quoted above rechecked and I would be happy to answer any question that arises. Finally, please note that publications and citations were not central to my earlier expression of dismay at the quality of QAU education.

What bothers me much more is the lack of analytical and problem-solving abilities of our Ph.D graduates, some honourable exceptions aside. Poor performance in the GREs is one indication of the rot. This fact has indeed worried you a little, as you indicated in an earlier email to me, but I do wish you could understand the real gravity of the situation.

Regards,

Pervez

Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman’s comments on this post can be found here.