[Reader-list] [arkitectindia] Mail From Pakistan

[arkitect95]

             REFORMING PAKISTAN'S UNIVERSITIES -- I
                        by 
                  Pervez Hoodbhoy



There is a severe and long-standing crisis in higher education. But, 
until the present military government took the initiative, there was 
no rehabilitation plan. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, appointed as chairman of 
the Higher Education Commission, was the wonder-man charged by General
Musharraf with turning the situation around. He was quick to make a
powerful pitch for vast increases in funding.

Foreign donors, worried about the implications of Pakistan's sinking
educational system, obliged. The higher education budget zoomed by 
twelve times (1,200 per cent) over three years, a world record. A 
number of new and innovative utilization schemes were announced.

Some solid achievements did emerge. Internet connectivity in 
universities has been substantially expanded; distance education is 
being seriously pursued through the newly established Virtual 
University; a digital library is in operation; some foreign faculty 
has been hired; students  are being sent abroad for PhD training 
(albeit largely to second rate institutions); some links with foreign 
institutions now exist; and money for scientific equipment is no 
longer a problem. No previous Pakistani government can boast of 
comparable accomplishments, and the HEC chairman deserves 
congratulations.

But the HEC is also setting into motion very dangerous, potentially
catastrophic, systemic changes. In this article I will look at the
problems in our higher education system and why the HEC reforms are 
set to make a bad situation worse rather than better. In a subsequent 
article, I will suggest some modest steps that may offer a way 
forward. 

Pakistan has almost a hundred universities now. Not one of them is 
world class. Truth be told, not even one of them is a real 
university, if by a university one means a community of scholars 
engaged in free inquiry and the creation of knowledge.

Take for example the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, reputed to 
be Pakistan's best. Academic activities common in good universities 
around the world are noticeably absent. Seminars and colloquia, where 
faculty present for peer review the results of their on-going 
research, are few and far between. Public lectures, debates, or 
discussions of contemporary scientific, cultural, or political issues 
are almost non-existent.

The teaching at QAU is no better. Rote learning is common, students 
are not encouraged to ask questions in class, and courses are rarely 
completed by the end of the semester. This university has three 
mosques but no bookstore. It is becoming more like a madressah in 
other ways too.

It was not always this way. The global intellectual ferment of the 
late 1960's and 70's had a stimulating impact on Pakistani campuses.
Intellectual, scientific, cultural and literary activity flourished. 
Young Pakistani scholars gave up potential careers in the West to 
come to Pakistani universities. But in November of 1981, just days 
after three QAU teachers had been caught with anti-martial law and 
pro-democracy pamphlets, General Ziaul Haq thundered on television 
that he would "purge the country's universities of the cancer of 
politics". He succeeded.

A quarter century later, the faculty are more concerned with money and
promotions than research, teaching, or bringing their knowledge to 
bear  on the myriad issues facing our society. Among the students 
there are many burqas and beards, but minuscule intellectual or 
creative activity. All student unions are gone, and ideological 
disputes have evaporated into the thin air. Instead of left vs right 
politics there is simple tribalism.Now Punjabi students gang together 
against Pakhtoon students, Muhajirs versus Sindhis, Shias versus 
Sunnis, etc.

Some campuses are run by gangs of hoodlums and harbour known 
criminals, while others have Rangers with machine guns on continuous 
patrol. On occasion, student wolf packs attack each other with 
sticks, stones, pistols, and automatic weapons. There are many campus 
murders.  Most students have not learned how to think; they cannot 
speak or write any language well, rarely read newspapers, and cannot 
formulate a coherent argument or manage any significant creative 
expression.

Dumbed down, this generation of Pakistanis is intellectually 
handicapped. Like overgrown children, students of my university now 
kill time by making colourful birthday posters for friends, 
do "istikhara" (fortune telling), and wander aimlessly in Islamabad's 
bazaars.

Understanding the scale of the failure is important. Compare 
Pakistan's premier university with those in its neighbours' capitals. 
First to the east: Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the Indian 
Institute of  Technology, in Delhi.

Their facilities are simple and functional, nothing like the
air-conditioned and carpeted offices of most professors at QAU. And, 
more important, every notice board is crammed with notices for 
seminars and colloquia, visitors from the very best foreign 
universities lecture there, research laboratories hum with activity, 
and pride and satisfaction are written all around.

Conflict on campuses does exist - communist and socialist students 
battle with Hindutva students over the Gujrat carnage, Iraq, Kashmir, 
and the BJP doctoring of history. Angry words are exchanged and 
polemics are issued against the other, but no heads are bashed. While 
lecturing at these institutions during a recent visit, I was 
impressed by the fearlessness and the informed, critical intelligence 
of the students who questioned and challenged me. I cannot imagine an 
Indian professor having a similar reception in Pakistan.

Now to the west: Teheran's Sharif University of Technology, and the
Institute for Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, are impressive
institutions filled with professional activity, workshops, and 
seminars. Even as they maintain good academic standards, Iranian 
university students are heavily political and today are spearheading 
the movement for freedom and democracy. Iranian students make it to 
the best US graduate schools. Although it is an Islamic republic, 
bookshops are more common than mosques in Tehran. Translations into 
Farsi appear in just weeks or months after a book is published in the 
western world.

Driven by the unfavourable comparison with neighbours, the need for
university reform finally became an issue. The first big idea was that
Pakistan needed more universities.  So today all it takes is a piece 
of paper from the HEC and some paint. Some colleges have literally 
had their signboards taken down for repainting, and been put back up 
changed into "universities" the next day.

By such sleight of hand the current tally of public universities,
according to the HEC website, is now officially 47, up from the 23
officially listed in 1996. In addition, there are eight degree 
awarding public sector institutes. Unfortunately, this is merely a 
numbers game. All new public sector universities lack infrastructure, 
libraries, laboratories, adequate faculty, or even a pool of students 
academically prepared to study at the university level.

The HEC's "generosity" extends even into largely illiterate tribal 
areas. There are so-called universities now in Malakand, Bannu, 
Kohat, Khuzdar, Gujrat, Haripur, and in many other places where it is 
difficult to detect the slightest potential for successfully 
establishing modern universities.

Another poorly thought-out, and dangerous, HEC scheme involves giving
massive cash awards to university teachers for publishing research 
papers - Rs 60,000 per paper published in a foreign journal. Although 
these stimulants are said to have increased the number of papers 
published in international journals by a whopping 44 per cent, there 
is little evidence that this increase in volume is the result of an 
increase in genuine research activity.

The fact is only a slim minority of Pakistani academics possesses the
ethics, motivation, and capability needed for genuine scientific 
discovery and research. For the majority, the HEC incentives are a 
powerful reason to discover the art of publishing in research 
journals without doing research, to find loopholes, and to learn how 
to cover up one's tracks.

Established practices of plagiarizing papers, multiple publications of
slightly different versions of the same paper in different research
journals, fabricating scientific data, and seeking out third-rate 
foreign journals with only token referees are now even more common. 
The HEC has broadcast the message: corruption pays.

The casual disregard for quality is most obvious in the HEC's massive 
PhD production programme. This involves enrolling 1,000 students in 
Pakistani universities every year for PhD degrees. Thereby 
Pakistan's "PhD deficit" (it produces less than 50 PhDs per annum at 
present) will supposedly be solved and it will soon be at par with 
India. In consequence, an army of largely incapable and ignorant 
students, armed with hefty HEC  fellowships, has sallied forth to 
write PhD theses.

Although the HEC claims that it has checked the students through 
a "GRE type test" (the American graduate school admission test), a 
glance at the question papers reveals it to be only a shoddy literacy 
and numeric test. In my department, advertised as the best physics 
department in the country, the average PhD student now has trouble 
with high-school level physics and even with reading English. 
Nevertheless there are as many as 18 PhD students registered with one 
supervisor! In the QAU biology department, that number rises to 37 
for one supervisor. HEC incentives have helped dilute PhD qualifying 
exams to the point where it is difficult for any student not to pass.

The implications of this mass-production of PhDs are dire. Very soon
hundreds and, in time, thousands of worthless PhDs will be cranked 
out. They will train even less competent students. Eventually they 
will become heads of departments and institutions. When appointed 
gatekeepers, they will regard more competent individuals as threats 
to be kept locked out. The degenerative spiral, long evident in any 
number of Pakistani institutions, will worsen rapidly, and become 
infinitely more difficult to break.


Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy is 
Professor of Physics
Quaid-e-Azam University
Islamabad 45320, Pakistan.










------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
Take a look at donorschoose.org, an excellent charitable web site for
anyone who cares about public education!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/O.5XsA/8WnJAA/E2hLAA/VaTolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arkitectindia/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    arkitectindia-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/