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WHILE there is much debate about access to primary education, very little is said about the policy failure vis-à-vis higher education institutions and colleges in Punjab. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the policy of transforming colleges offering graduate and post-graduate courses into university sub-campuses.
This has raised concerns regarding the interrelated issues of access, equity and affordability of higher education for most students. The Chakwal Post-Graduate College (CPGC) had resisted conversion into a sub-campus managed by the University of Gujrat.
The CPGC was established in 1949 with local philanthropists pooling their resources and donating land to get it off the ground. In the 1990s, the college was upgraded to Master’s level after having produced BA and BSc graduates who got good grades from the University of Punjab. However, in recent years, the college has been forcibly affiliated with Gujrat University.
Flawed policies have led to limited access to higher education.
This has meant disaffiliation from Punjab University which has resulted in the discontinuation of the BA/BSc programme. With the college now expected to raise much of the funds itself, it has meant restricting the affordable route to higher education for a vast number of poor and lower-middle-class students. As a result of the affiliation with Gujrat University, the future of affordable MA/MSc courses is also in jeopardy. Thus in one stroke, the access of poor but bright students to affordable higher education has been drastically curtailed.
Even worse, the new graduate-level BS courses, currently funded by the Punjab government and being offered at a relatively affordable per semester fee of Rs5-6000, are, according to reports, likely to be offered at Rs39,000 under the new sub-campus arrangements. This would represent an astronomical increase, putting marketable BS (the four-year degree as opposed to the traditional two-year BSc) qualifications beyond the reach of a large number of students from modest and poor backgrounds.
Many other venerable institutions such as the Government College Sahiwal and the Multan Women’s College, that have been placed under failed and latterly revoked sub-campus arrangements, confirm fears of costs curtailing the right to higher education.
Both colleges blame the experiment for a catastrophic drop in overall college admissions. The drop was more pronounced in the BS course where admissions dropped to the lowest-ever number because of unaffordable course fees.
There is a discernible pattern which involves subtly putting up barriers to higher education under the pretext of expanding access in the name of the new sub-campuses.
The new move also points to a trend in Punjab where the government seems to be washing its hands of funding and subsiding new courses such as the BS, thus making access to higher education restrictive, selective, and expensive.
The shift towards sub-campuses has come on the heels of another widely resisted move, that of foisting boards of governors, comprised mainly of businessmen, upon old colleges such as that of Chakwal with the aim of part-privatising them. Where the board of governors’ kite did not fly due to opposition, the recourse to sub-campuses has appeared to be the new face of the failed board of governors’ policy. Of the over 20 colleges where the board of governors’ idea was stoutly rejected, some are now being slapped with the must-take sub-campus solution. This has education activists worried about the privatised direction of higher education in Punjab.
The issue here is besides that of not investing in higher education; it is of piggybacking on existing resources to load onto people an expensive and large privatised system in place of the well-functioning, old college system which promoted better and more equitable access to higher education. All this loops back to the haphazard way in which the privatisation of higher education has been conducted in the province.
As far as I can recall, this privatisation of education got under way when some influential members of a student group, enjoying coercive access to Punjab University, got their private college affiliated during Gen Zia’s regime. This trend has now reached reputable public-sector colleges which are being transformed into private entities under the inflated title of sub-campuses.
The result is the jettisoning of even residual commitment to the notion of making higher education accessible and affordable to students from modest backgrounds. If the government of Punjab continues down this path, only students of privileged backgrounds will enter institutions of higher learning. The policy needs to be rethought and redesigned in a way that protects
students’ right to access higher education and gain employable qualifications at an affordable cost.
The writer is a development consultant and policy analyst.
Twitter: @arifazad5
Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2015
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