KARACHI: Govt urged to wind up task force on higher education
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, July 4: Rejecting the proposed recommendations of the task force on higher education reforms, representatives of students and teachers’ bodies, academicians and leaders of political parties at a seminar on Thursday urged the government to wind up the task force immediately and form another broad-based commission.
The speakers, while deliberating on the proposed higher education reforms and concept papers prepared by the task force, observed that the affairs of public sector universities were reported in a “flimsy manner” in which ground realities have been ignored.
The recommendations of the task force and its steering committee, if implemented, would play a havoc with education, and pave the way for frequent government interferences in higher education, while on the other hand due to enormous increase in varsity fees, higher education would not remain an accessible commodity even to people from the middle-income group, they maintained.
The seminar on “recommendations of task force—apprehensions and impacts” was organized by a student organization, the Islami Jamiat Talaba.
Deputy chief of Jamaat-i-Islami Prof Ghafoor Ahmed, who presided over the seminar, said every child had the right to acquire primary as well as higher education and the government should refrain from taking such steps which would create further hurdles for students.
He said that the government should not try to implement any controversial or ill-conceived policies pertaining to higher education and should leave the matter to the elected government.
He said the proposed recommendations on higher education were aimed at narrowing the scope of education for poor and middle income groups.
He warned that if the government enforced the so-called higher education reforms, like its other packages, teachers and students would lodge a strong protest jointly.
Former Mayor of Karachi and the deputy convener of Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s coordination committee, Dr Farooq Sattar, rejected the recommendations of the task force and said these were ill-conceived, anti-people and anti-education.
He said after the enforcement of the devolution plan, it could be in the fitness of things that the task force should have recommended that Nazims and district governments should be given a role to nominate people in public sector universities.
In case of nominations, the task force is badly relying on governors of the provinces, who are representatives of the federal government, he added.
He said it appeared that the present government, comprising technocrats, was all set to destroy every institution.
He appreciated the organisors and mentioned that it was a good omen that people had started thinking over issues and a forum had been created to raise voice against the task force on higher education reforms as well.
PPP leader Prof N D Khan said the government wanted to take over the educational institutions, including the universities under its administrative and political aspirations.
He said that the government should ensure representation of teachers and students in the affairs of their respective educational institutions, otherwise any leadership crisis could hardly be averted, in future.
The former vice chancellor of the university of Karachi said that the vision statement of the task force, among other things, also called for producing enlightened citizens with strong moral and ethical values that built a tolerant and pluralistic society rooted in the culture of Pakistan, but such target or ambition had never been prescribed in the task force recommendations.
He said that the argument that our two-year degree programme or those graduated under the existing degree programmes were not acceptable abroad was incorrect.
It was not appropriate to make any drastic changes in the course of examinations on any irrelevant proposition, he said, adding in a situation when 99 per cent of the population was not having any chances of going abroad and serving or getting education there, why a four-year degree programmes was being necessitated in the country.
SPLA leader Prof Riaz Ahsan said the university had got a set of rules approved by the legislative bodies of the country and as such the imposition of ad hoc policies or reforms without the approval of the assembly would complex the situation further.
The president of the Karachi University teachers’ Society, Dr Fahimuddin said that though the policy was aimed to be made effective on public sector universities, there was a negligible representation from public sector universities and that was why recommendations were being finalized in isolation.
A senior teacher at the University of Karachi, Dr Abdul Qadeer, said that enrolment for higher education, including that at degree classes, would further go down, in case the task force reforms were implemented.
The Nazim of Islami Jamiat Talaba Pakistan, Naved Anwar, said that higher education reforms were meant to encourage the private sector and hand over the public sector affairs in the hand of handpicked private sector people.
He said that students and teachers be allowed to play an integrated role in the educational system in the country.
Others who spoke on the occasion included, Sajjad Mir and Amir Ashraf, the chief of IJT’s anti-task force committee.
