KARACHI, Sept 11: Immediately after the approval of the “Foreign Faculty Hiring Programme” by the Central Development Working Party (CDWP), forwarded by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to recruit 300 foreign professors annually, local teachers’ bodies have started opposing the scheme.

Several professors at the University of Karachi have termed hiring of foreign faculty, contractual appointment of the existing faculty and external examiners for regular students as imposition of the Model University Ordinance.

According to them all these steps are being taken under pressures by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and are tantamount to commercialisation of education.

Dr Riaz Ahmed, Secretary Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Associations (FAPUASA), said hiring of foreign faculty by spending a huge sum of Rs3.2 billion was a major expenditure strongly detested by ordinary teachers.

Criticising Chairman HEC, Dr Atta-ur-Rehman who is also the minister in charge of science and technology, Dr Riaz said: Dr Atta is well-known for spending billions of rupees on his IT and science and technology policies which provided little results. The failure of these policies caused billions to the national exchequer and led to loss of hope amongst the youths. The same can be the fate of his current HEC policies.”

Other critics say it is not clear how the hired foreign faculty would advance the pedagogical skills of the students while teaching specific subjects/topics at the Bachelor/Masters/PhD level.

They believe that the proposed programme would create a sense of discrimination in the existing faculty working on normal salary packages.

A KU faculty member said that, if it was inevitable the foreign faculty should only be hired to supervise scholars to be trained under local Ph.D programmes and the requirement of the faculty should be determined on a case-to-case basis (merit rate criteria).—PPI