MULTAN, June 10: Voice of all the stakeholders in higher education — the government, teachers, students and the community — should be heard properly at all the decision-making fora for transparency and accountability of affairs of universities.

These were the concluding remarks by a member of the steering committee of the task force on improvement of higher education in Pakistan and vice-chancellor of the Peshawar University, Prof Dr Zulfiqar Gilani, at a consultative meeting here on Monday.

The meeting was attended by VCs and faculty members of the Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, and the Islamia University, Bahawalpur.

Dr Tariq Banuri, the steering committee secretary; Musharraf Zaidi, the research associate with the steering committee; and Ms Rafia Nazeer, the provincial secretary, higher education, were prominent among other participants.

The Multan meeting was the last of the consultative process held by the steering committee on reforms in higher education. Earlier, the committee started its consultative process in Karachi on March 27 last, and later did the same exercise in other parts of the country.

The steering committee was constituted by President Pervez Musharraf for restructuring the higher education system, and the president of the Aga Khan University, Karachi, Dr Shams Kassim Lakha, was appointed its chairman.

Dr Lakha could not attend the Multan meeting. However, Dr Banuri read out his message. In his message, Dr Lakha said the steering committee and the task force were committed to bring about a reform agenda for higher education which would be pro-student, pro-teacher and pro-university.

He promised that the structural changes in the present setup of the public-sector universities would ensure better salary package to the faculty, more official findings to the universities, at least 15 per cent of the total budget of a university to be spent on research and enrolment of students from lower and lower-middle class strata of society.

Dr Banuri said there was a crisis in higher education which should not be under-estimated as only 2.6 per cent of the students eligible for higher education could reach universities in Pakistan.

The ratio was even lower than that of India (6.5 per cent) and Bangladesh (7 per cent). He said now more than 50 per cent of the students in urban Pakistan opted to study in private institutes. “This trend will destroy equity and academic quality in the country,” he said, and added “therefore we should strengthen public-sector colleges and universities to cater services to more people”. He said to successfully implement the reform agenda, the task force had proposed the government to allocate at least 0.8 per cent of the GNP for higher education in the coming fiscal. At present, the ratio of spending in this sector was 0.2 to 0.3 per cent of the GNP.

During the question-answer session, most participants expressed skepticism over the objectives and reform agenda of the task force.

They insisted that the Universities Act was still effective and democratic in nature. They urged that instead of bringing about changes in the administrative setup of universities or reinventing altogether a new one, the government should mend the loopholes in the present act.

They disputed the steering committee claim that the proposed reform agenda has more checks and balances.

They said the universities already had effective decision-making fora, such as senate, syndicate, academic council and board of studies which if allowed to work properly could produce the desired results.

Criticizing the proposed method of nominations for governing bodies of the universities, the participants said it was the negation of the very spirit of democracy and transparency underlined to change the culture of the institutes of higher education.

They referred to the formation of board of governors of autonomous hospitals and affiliated medical colleges where too many non-professionals had been inducted on political basis.

They also objected that teachers were the practitioners of the policies in universities but there seemed no role assigned to them on decision-making fora proposed under the reform agenda.

They said the task force looked weary of the democratic process and elected bodies as most of the tiers it proposed would be nominated by a person or a group of people.

They said teachers and students should be the focal point of whatever reforms the government wanted to introduce in the system as rest of the stakeholders were just facilitators whether it was the university administration or the government.

They also stressed a transparent system based on the principle of access to information rather than, what Dr Banuri said, ‘disclosure of information’ as in the latter case it would be the discretion of the authority to disclose or not to disclose the information to other stakeholders.

The participants also termed the report of the task force ‘vague’ and sometimes ‘intriguing’, specially regarding the use of executive powers in day-to-day working of the university. “The report is silent on vital issues like examinations and curricula.”

Dr Zulfiqar Gilani termed the apprehensions of the teachers and students as ‘fear of unknown’, and said they were not working for a perfect system but their endeavour was for a better system.

He said in the past, policy-makers had always stressed uniformity of the higher education system as a strait-jacket formula for all, but the task force was providing a guideline and it would be up to the respective university that how it would decide under the given outline by synchronizing it with its specific objective conditions.

He agreed that there should be a method to induct teachers to decision-making fora through a regular democratic process besides there should also be a way out to do away with any governing body member making troubles in its smooth working.

He admitted that the task force and the steering committee could not address the issue of representation of all the stakeholders on decision-making fora in their earlier recommendations.

“This matter will be properly addressed in the final draft,” he assured.

It was decided that the delegations of the Bahauddin Zakariya and the Islamia universities would meet the steering committee members in the federal capital on June 15 and 20, respectively, to discuss what was pertinent for their universities.

BZU VC Prof Dr Ghulam Mustafa admitted that the research work was the least thing being done in the universities which had displaced the institutions of higher education from their real task.