THIS is apropos your editorial( Aug 4) on the HEC proposal ‘District universities’ (Aug 4).

Before the HEC thinks about the district universities, it will be better to form a high-powered committee to audit the activities of the existing universities.

The committee should audit the activities of the newly-formed medical, engineering, law and veterinary universities and try to find out how much money has gone into these universities and what benefit people got from them. The committee should also be able to analyse the standard of education and the basis of appointment of faculty members with their performance.

The provincial government, instead of guiding the HEC for district universities, should declare emergency for improving education in primary and secondary schools in every district. Most of these schools have no benches no water, no toilets and no teachers. Poor children have no exercise books, no pens or pencils. Fewer than one per cent of these schools have any kind of library. Universities cannot be created by executive orders. They grow like pregnancy, starting with a single cell and developing into a multi-system structure where each department has all possible abilities because of best nutritional supplies.

Dr Shershah Syed A. Rauf Sozer

Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2015

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