KARACHI, Oct 19: While the commercialisation of higher education is hurting its quality with university prospectuses looking more like tourist brochures, there is a need to rethink as to how this marketing trend can best serve education instead of damaging it, said Dr Farid Panjwani, director of the Centre for Research and Evaluation in Muslim Education, Institute of Education, the University of London, at a conference on Saturday.

He was speaking at the Postcolonial Higher Education Conference, hosted by Habib University, where scholars, thinkers, writers and activists reflected on the crisis, direction and goals of education in present times keeping in mind the significance of modern humanities and social sciences in South Asia.

Dr Panjwani in his keynote address on ‘Passionate sense of the potential: towards constructing a new social imagination’ pointed towards the marketing and commercialisation of higher education and said: “I have to share with you what the gentleman driving me to the hotel here from the airport said to me after finding out the purpose of my visit. Our conversation shifted to fake degrees and he regretfully said that what to say of those getting them made when the ones with genuine degrees haven’t also achieved much.

“Well, that’s what has been happening here now when knowledge is seen more as a commodity. Marketing education is a big trend in developing countries.”

He said that earlier teachers felt embarrassed to be paid for their services. They were more comfortable receiving an honorarium instead as they believed that knowledge didn’t come with a price tag. “But these days you go to an education fair and most of the university representatives there speaking to students happen to be the marketing people of a university. Universities ought to send out their professors who can better guide the students about what their university can offer to them,” he suggested.

“The university prospectuses, too, have started looking like tourist brochures. And it is this kind of a trend that is stunting the individuality of our students,” he said.

Dr Sanjay Seth, professor of Politics and director of the Centre for Postcolonial Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, read out a paper on ‘Higher education in Indian social imagery in 150 years’, which enquired about the nature of symbolic investment and the ways in which it has changed over time.

“When you see the job market arranging tests to access the expertise of the people then the degrees that these people possess have obviously lost their merit,” he said, while adding that when the first Indian universities were established some 150 years ago, Indian elites as well as colonial masters invested in higher education with huge symbolic significance despite the miniscule numbers directly affected.

“University and Western education was seen as a passport to a better life and make a subordinate a supervisor. Congress sessions regularly urged the British government to provide more education while accusing them of not providing enough for the masses. But education in India today is an everyday aspect. The numbers affected are much larger and growing but the discourses surrounding it indicate that it is still invested with a symbolic load disproportionate to any realist or instrumental measures of significance,” he said. Dr Rubina Saigol, an independent researcher specialising in social development, spoke on the ‘Decline of knowledge, rise of education and social sciences in the neo-liberal era’.

Overemphasis on specialization

“There is so much emphasis on specialisation now that overall knowledge is becoming smaller. But knowledge is a process, not a product. Often new knowledge is punished as it challenges the status quo. So it is not readily welcomed in the beginning,” she said.

“Social sciences do not have status and prestige of hard sciences so they receive fewer resources. Social sciences do not produce weapons, armaments, machines, computers, etc. Social sciences are less useful in trade and commerce and are not directly profit oriented. But social sciences are used in business and administration to control working class and consumer behaviours. Social sciences produce state intellectuals, public intellectuals,” she said.

“The advent of neo-liberal globalisation has seen a decline in Social Sciences and Humanities. Departments of History, Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, etc., are closing due to low funding. This is because the states, ruling classes and markets discourage critical thinking. But it is not possible to humanise or critically understand the universe without Humanities or Social Sciences,” she added.

Dr Ravindran Sriramchandran, assistant professor at the Department of International Studies, American University of Sharjah, read out a paper on ‘The case for reading vernacular classics’ in which he attempted to answer questions such as why should we care at all about the fate of the vernacular classics and what is really lost if competence is lost.

Finally, a panel discussion among writer and literary critic Asif Aslam Farrukhi, architect and urban planner Arif Hasan, writers Intizar Hussain and Mohammed Hanif on ‘Literature and culture in dark times’ concluded the conference.

Habib University President Wasif Rizvi and Acting Dean, School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Habib University Dr Nauman Naqvi also spoke.