Not just the universities

IT IS not entirely surprising that some so-called private universities in Islamabad are trying to persuade the Higher Education Commission to grant them degree-awarding status, even though they have not fulfilled the stipulated academic requirements. Given the government’s past record of handing out charters left and right to institutions not really deserving them, these so-called universities are trying to improve their status when the going is good. But one hopes that the restructuring of the mechanism for overseeing the universities — the UGC is now out and the HEC has been performing its functions and many more, since August 2002 — will ensure that academic quality will remain the main guiding principle in establishing and accrediting universities.

The government’s keenness to expand the higher education sector is underlined by the phenomenal rise in the number of universities and degree-awarding institutions in the last few years. From 48 in 1999 their number has doubled to 96 today, with 77 being given university status. Of these 35 are said to be in the public sector. In February 2002 the cabinet laid down some stringent guidelines to decide whether an institution qualifies for the grant of a charter. But one cannot be too certain that these criteria actually ensure high quality education in the chartered universities. At times the teaching staff, even when holding the prescribed professional qualifications, lacks competence and commitment which are essential qualities for an educational institution to function effectively as a seat of higher learning.

The fact is that even the public sector universities in the country are not functioning as efficiently as they should. It seems that the resistance expressed against the Model University Ordinance has prompted the government to shelve the entire issue of improving university standards, which should be its priority. There is need for the government to sort out its differences with its critics so that the task of streamlining the universities can be taken in hand earnestly. Simply concentrating on the expansion of numbers as is being done now is an ill-conceived strategy. The goal set before the HEC is to double enrolment in the universities to 200,000 by the year 2005 with 40 per cent of the students going to private institutions. But if standards are dubious, this expansion will not really help produce well-qualified graduates.

Another factor which will affect academic quality is the government’s failure to give a boost to primary and tertiary education in the country. Apart from pedagogy, the quality of students who enter the universities also determines their academic standards. It is strange why this aspect of the education sector is not being addressed sufficiently. The rate of expansion of primary schools has fallen — last year only 800 of them were opened — and their poor quality has driven away many students from their rolls. With the expenditure on education as a percentage of GNP actually falling — from 2.5 per cent in 1995 to 1.7 per cent today — how can academic standards be raised? All these are interrelated issues and universities cannot be viewed in isolation. There is need to develop a holistic approach to education to give a boost to the standards at every level.

Over-invoicing

The tendency amongst some unscrupulous elements within the business community to indulge in over-invoicing is a practice that needs to be checked by the government with firmness. The Central Board of Revenue has confirmed that over-invoicing is indeed taking place and has promised a crackdown. The Export Collectorate in Karachi has said a number of such cases have been detected lately. The fraud involves some commercial importers, who have joined hands with exporters for mutual benefit. The importers provide copies of over-valued import invoices to exporters enabling them to show that they have used imported items in the making of exported goods and on the basis of this they get sales tax refunds. The money that is refunded is then shared by both the exporter and the importer. This is not simply a case of defrauding the government and the national exchequer. This practice has far reaching implications for the state of the economy.

To start with, over-invoicing leads to inflated export figures. A good example is the country’s exports to the UAE, which swelled to $783 million in the first ten months of the fiscal year 2002-03 as against $567 million in the corresponding period of the previous year, thereby registering an increase of 38 per cent. These figures are misleading because the major portion of over-invoicing has taken place on exports to the UAE according to government officials. The CBR has now dispatched a team to Dubai to verify and check the imports on which the claims were made. The inflated export figures will give a wrong picture of the country’s balance of trade and balance of payments position. This means that the trade deficit the government is claiming is larger than what is made out. The government needs to take quick action to check the practice and take to task those involved.

French stance on Lockerbie

FRANCE’s threat that it might veto the Security Council resolution calling for an end to sanctions against Libya lacks moral justification. Let us here recall how Paris settled its 1989 plane bombing case for which it blamed Libya. France did not take the case to the UN. Instead, it settled the issue on its own. Had Paris chosen to take the case to the UN, it could have got a similar compensation in damages that it is now grudging the Lockerbie victims. Nowhere in the world can anyone be tried twice for the same crime. Libya has paid up the French victims’ families, as was required by a Paris court in its judgment of 1999. Tripoli has endured 15 long years of international isolation and all-embracing sanctions in the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing and now deserves to come out of limbo.

The French court’s ruling awarding 3,000 to 30,000 euros to every family of the victims of the French plane crash now seems a paltry compensation in comparison with the $10 million each awarded to the families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing under the UN-brokered deal. Why the French court settled for less is for France to decide. Libya has met all the conditions that the UN wanted it to meet before international sanctions are lifted. The Lockerbie deal reminds the world that justice can be served by using means other than war. Libya should now be allowed to come back in the mainstream of international community. The economic sanctions imposed on Tripoli harmed Libyan interests as they did those of Libya’s trading partners. They can now claim their share from its re-entry into the world economy. The French stance on the issue simply lacks substance.