WISE chancellor: that is how most universities refer to the post of the vice-chancellor. He or she is someone who has the vision and wisdom to provide academic, managerial and ethical leadership to the faculty and students of the university. Since the rapid ‘generalization’ of our society, the function of vice-chancellors too has been “generalized’. It is now possible to have a good vice-chancellor who was once good at, say, commanding a platoon or a brigade. Einstein’s ‘general’ theory of university tells us that a brigade and a university, in fact, have an identical molecular structure, and thus can be effectively run by the same “general” principles. The HEC in its higher educational wisdom has now about a dozen such gentlemen as vice-chancellors of various universities in Pakistan. As the first part of this designation can be misunderstood for someone indulgent in activities that are not entirely virtuous, it may be more appropriate to henceforth call them the ‘wise’ chancellors of universities. One will only have to be careful to avoid acronyms.
This article is intended to describe the two contemporary approaches, being increasingly adopted by our wise chancellors, as I would refer to them from now on. The scientific names for these very popular approaches are the ‘eternalizing your boss’ approach and the ‘credentializing your boss’ approach. Let me give a few specific examples to explain the philosophy of these two approaches and how smoothly, profitably and successfully these advanced indigenously developed techniques are being put into practice in Pakistan.
First, the ‘eternalizing your boss approach’. About a year ago, the wise chancellor of the Allama Iqbal Open University decided to name one of its under-construction research centres as ‘Attaur Rehman Research Complex’, to eternalize the name of his boss, who incidentally also happens to be chairman of the Higher Education Commission. The wise chancellor was insistent on the appropriateness of this unethical technique, and agreed to change the name only after Dr Atta personally intervened with a request to take his name off. The wise chancellor reluctantly agreed to comply, but went back to renaming it again as Attaur Rehman Research Complex in August this year. When pressed for a second time by citizens (as well as Dr Atta), to not name the institute after a serving minister, the honourable wise chancellor came out with this very reluctant response: “We at the AIOU find no other way but to accept your desire to discontinue using your name for the research complex being constructed at the university.”
Not to be left behind, only four weeks later, operating on the same principle, the Kohat University wise chancellor came up with a similar eternalizing scheme of a department to be named after Dr Attaur Rehman. Fortunately, Dr Atta was quick to respond this time, and politely turned down the offer. Nearer at home, overwhelmed by the Sindh governor’s contribution to the field of medicine, (does any body recall if he ever saw a patient), the wise chancellor of the Dow Medical University has proposed to name the Institute of the Oral Health Science at the Sindh Medical College (SMC) after the name of Governor Ishratul Ibad Khan. There does seem to be an urgent need for the government to quickly come out with a law on naming of public institutes that could restrain our wise chancellors from naming the left-over institutes after individuals of questionable repute.
The second approach called the “credentializing your boss” approach is an extremely powerful and rapid fruit-bearing technique. Invented by the National University of Modern Languages, it is based on rapidly raising the credentials of your boss, from BA to PhD, in the shortest possible time, so that the favour could be promptly returned on a “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” basis. Successfully tested on a boss, an ex-chairman of the UGC, the credentializing exercise took just one year, and the boss’s credentials sky-rocketed to an impressive PhD status. One understands that our famous ex-minister of education is already in the experimental pipeline, and would soon successfully emerge as a PhD, with robes, caps and degrees etc.
Why has there been such a sharp degradation in the behaviour and ethics of those we hold in such high esteem and at such high pedestals? To begin with, we need to choose suitably qualified and not “generalized” wise chancellors. Those with degrees from such wishy-washy places like The American University of London must be promptly sent home. Having failed to scrutinize fake degrees of many of our law-makers (for the sake of political convenience), the HEC must at least do the needful for its own fraternity of wise chancellors. No wonder, the award which my daughter received from Karachi university this morning reads, “ Karachi University - a place of impart knowledge.”
WISE chancellor: that is how most universities refer to the post of the vice-chancellor. He or she is someone who has the vision and wisdom to provide academic, managerial and ethical leadership to the faculty and students of the university. Since the rapid ‘generalization’ of our society, the function of vice-chancellors too has been “generalized’. It is now possible to have a good vice-chancellor who was once good at, say, commanding a platoon or a brigade. Einstein’s ‘general’ theory of university tells us that a brigade and a university, in fact, have an identical molecular structure, and thus can be effectively run by the same “general” principles. The HEC in its higher educational wisdom has now about a dozen such gentlemen as vice-chancellors of various universities in Pakistan. As the first part of this designation can be misunderstood for someone indulgent in activities that are not entirely virtuous, it may be more appropriate to henceforth call them the ‘wise’ chancellors of universities. One will only have to be careful to avoid acronyms.
