January 9, 2005

In spite of much lip-service to public consultations, the academics at public universities and students at large are not often involved in a dialogue with the policymakers in order to come up with reforms that can improve our education system

THE pervasive influence of donor agencies on policymaking of countries like Pakistan continues to be denied by the authorities and vehemently criticized by some experts. The authorities deny such an influence because they are aware that policy-making under such conditions is unlikely to meet the needs or demands of the people they purport to serve. Otherwise, why would there be a crisis of legitimacy?

The education sector of any nation is important not only because it impacts the skill level and thus productivity of ‘human capital’, but also because it helps define the aspirations and ethos of society to a large extent. Influence over the what, how and who of education is critical since the education sector can be a lucrative market for universities planning to expand internationally under WTO rules opening up the service sector. These universities are, in fact, operating in ways similar to multinational companies, that is, developing a brand identity, ensuring a standardized product etc.

This situation reminds one of what intellectual Claude Alvares once pointed out: “Knowledge is power, but power is also knowledge. Power decides what is knowledge and what is not knowledge.” Since the colonial times the content and context of education has been manipulated to ensure the dominance of some particular points of view regarding the history, politics and ethics of colonized societies. In this regard, the destruction of local knowledge and in particular confidence in local knowledge of local historical and political legacies is an important aspect.

A close look at the process through which the recent so-called reforms in Pakistan’s higher education sector were instituted would make it important for us to understand the implications of these reforms. In 2000, the World Bank released a report called ‘Higher Education in Developing Countries; Peril and Promise.’ In April 2002, a report called ‘Higher Education in Pakistan; Towards a Reform Agenda’ was drafted by a group of Pakistani born academics and researchers who call themselves The Boston Group (BG). Their report was commissioned by the Task Force on Higher Education, set up by the government of Pakistan. The final task force executive summary, which was not made public, was the basis for drafting the Model University Ordinance and for setting up the Higher Education Commission (HEC). Later in 2002, the government of Pakistan, under General Musharraf’s guidance, passed the Model University Ordinance that aimed to establish different Boards of Governors (BOGs) in state-run teaching hospitals and universities, initially in two provinces, and subsequently in all of them.

We shall look at the impact of the BOGs later. Let us look at the process through which the reports influenced the formation of these boards. That the experts chosen to write the two reports share the same view on education reforms is not a big surprise. The writers of the Boston Group report openly admit that the purpose of their report is to ‘advance the ideas previously presented in the 2000 World Bank Task Force on Higher Education.’ What is much more interesting is the fact that some key ‘experts’ were involved in writing both reports.

In addition to the two American academics who were the principal drafters of the World Bank report, Syed Babar Ali and Shams Lakha are the main Pakistani representatives on both reports. Neither is an academic. And both are affiliated with the largest private universities in Pakistan. Since the reform process was targeted at the universities, it would have made sense to provide more space, if not prominence, to the key stakeholders, namely, the academics and students of public universities.

However, the critical question this duplication of experts on the two reports raises is: what purpose does the Boston Group report serve if it is to be directed by the core group of the same experts to arrive at the same conclusions? The critical service that the Boston Group report performs is that it legitimizes the ideas first propounded in the World Bank report as supported by the ‘Pakistani academic’ community. The academics involved in the Boston Group, although living and working outside Pakistan, are of Pakistani origin. Most have no links with the public universities in Pakistan, and thus have no stakes in the system. Their report is a result of a meeting called in April 2002 in Boston, US, and not even in Pakistan.

This, of course, is a tried and tested practice by the World Bank where a policy is given a local flavour by such means. A similar exercise seems to have been conducted for other developing countries to ‘customize’ the same reforms suggested by the World Bank report to ‘local’ conditions, as it happened in Mozambique’s case.

Critically, the content of the reports betrays the lack of concern for the very education system they set out to reform. The reports do not provide any historical context and detailed analysis of why the educational sectors of developing countries may be in the state they are, even though much time is spent on analysing what that state is. Ironically, the World Bank report does recognise in passing that many problems in the higher education sector in developing countries today are created by the focus advocated and financed by international donor agencies like the World Bank on primary and secondary education.

Since the ‘80s, many national governments and international donors have assigned higher education a relatively low priority. Narrow — and misleading — economic analysis has contributed to the view that public investment in universities and colleges brings meagre returns compared to the investment in primary and secondary schools, and that higher education magnifies income inequality.

There is of course much truth in what both reports identify as key problems in the educational systems of less developed countries in general, and Pakistan in particular. These problems include lack of infrastructure, inadequately trained and motivated teachers, and what both reports call problems of ‘governance’. But what the reports fail to highlight is that the problems raised are critically linked to under-funding and mismanagement of priorities at the highest level. A World Bank survey makes clear that in Pakistan education at all levels receives a very low portion of government funding, and obviously higher education receives a fraction of that. Within South Asia, a region that spends very little on education compared with other regions of the world, Pakistan spends even lower than the regional averages.

It is therefore surprising that both reports do not really touch on that issue. A country like Pakistan that spends nearly 48 per cent of its budget on defence and 37 per cent on debt servicing, certainly needs advice on priority management. To claim simply, as the Boston Group writers, that ‘we are also mindful of the fact that ‘resources are limited’ does not help in either truly understanding the problem or suggesting appropriate solutions. If we do not challenge the assumption of limited resources then of course the only option that remains is further privatization, which indeed is what they recommend.

The BG report exhorts Pakistani policymakers to raise ‘the resource base of the institutions’ by ‘rationalizing’ the tuition structure and fees to ‘reflect the cost of the education’, by encouraging universities to initiate programmes of professional education ‘as a revenue-generating strategy’ and by treating university property resources as assets where ‘universities should be allowed and encouraged to manage these assets as finance-generating devices’.

Mr Shams Lakha, who also acted as head of the Pakistan Higher Education Commission at its formation, in an interview said: “We must inform them (parents of students) that even if their tuition fee is, say, Rs2,000, the actual cost of education is around Rs80,000 and the state is paying as much as Rs78,000.”

How will parents know of these “true costs” if not by bearing them? Indeed, soon after the proclamation of the boards of governors in many of Punjab’s colleges and universities, fees went up by as much as 900 per cent. The students who would previously have been able to gain admission to prestigious colleges and universities based on merit were refused admission because they could not afford the exorbitant fees. Public schools and universities often occupy prime property in Pakistani cities. The immediate effect of establishing the BOGs having influential industrialists was the sale of some of this property at much below market prices to their own companies.

Critics of these recommendations like Mr Nazim Husnain, president of the All Pakistan Lecturers Association, have pointed out that the establishment of these BOGs is a first step towards establishing conditions conducive to opening up the Pakistani educational and health sectors to foreign capital under WTO rules. Indeed many developing countries, including Pakistan, were to report on progress in preparing their service sector, which includes health and education for foreign investment to the WTO in March 2004.

Predictably, there was a wave of protests across the country by those most affected, the teaching staff and students of public universities. They were joined by college teachers, doctors and lawyers who were also affected by similar privatizations and formulations of the BOGs in their own fields. After several months of protests the government was forced to back down on a number of measures, but not after the BOGs were instituted in some of the key educational institutes of Punjab. To date, the Model University Ordinance has not been implemented in the old public universities, but does apply to many private and newly created ones. The government, at this stage seems to have retreated to a position of creeping implementation taking a department here and a college there under its purview.

In the fantasy world of the World Bank, the government would play the role of the supervisor. The WB report claims, ‘Public policy makers have primary responsibility for: developing the architecture of a rational system of higher education and orchestrating its smooth operation in a manner that promotes both mass education and excellence.’ These are, of course, the same policymakers who have not managed to finance public education by more than two per cent of the GDP.

If this government can be the architect and overseer of both ‘mass education and excellence’ then certainly it can achieve a lot more by re-orienting its priorities and releasing more funds to public universities that have continued to maintain some quality — not because of government support. The large private universities with government and foreign donor support, be it in terms of roads and electricity access or in terms of outright subsidies, not to forget the huge student fees, continue to operate in the red. If the government can be the overseer of excellence then certainly it has nothing to lose by involving as many public sector academics in consultations as possible rather than engaging in backroom negotiations with individuals as is the case now. In fact, with characteristic stealth the government is currently in the process of imposing a Tenure Track System, turned down by academic representatives of the public universities, avoiding again any open and public discussion of this system.

The reports may not use the word ‘privatization’ anywhere on their pages, but what is being recommended is clearly that. In fact, it is interesting to note how scrupulously the word itself has been avoided while all its trappings have been strongly recommended. There is no reason why the government and society in Pakistan should not consider some aspects of privatization as possible options for improving the educational system. However, let it be a conclusion that we come to as a society. In spite of much lip-service to public consultations, the academics at public universities, the public and students at large were not involved in a dialogue with the policymakers; and when some select groups were, the results were not made public. The meeting held under the auspices of the Boston Group in Boston may qualify as a ‘public consultation’ under World Bank definitions, which has extended support to its recommendations, but certainly failed the test of key stakeholders in the Pakistani educational system. The oppositional movement that was initiated as a result of these ‘reforms’ is as much a rejection of the process, as of the policies.

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