May 28, 2006

IN his last article on the Higher Education Commission (HEC) written on May 9, 2006 published in Dawn, Shahid Javed Burki talked about improving the state of higher education in the country. While commending the initiative of establishing the HEC, he bemoaned the problem of lack of quality of higher education. The writer, however, limited himself to analysing the problem in a bureaucratic-institutional paradigm. The article talked about the gap between the public and private sector pay scales as one of the factors retarding better standards in university education. It also touched upon the issue of accountability in public sector universities, a subject that needs greater consideration more than anything else.

The article in question rightly pointed out the fact that none of Pakistans universities figure anywhere in the list of the 500 internationally recognised universities. This is primarily due to the dearth of quality manpower in the higher education sector. Those that developed the HEC concept view this problem primarily from a bureaucratic-institutional perspective. Such a standpoint tends to find a solution in terms of the poor pay scales. Hence, the proposal that led to the establishment of the HEC suggested building public-private sectors partnership. However, the proposal to improve the quality suffers from acknowledging the real problem in improving the quality of higher education in the country.

It is clear that the lack of quality is due to the dearth of well-trained manpower. The HEC, in fact, has wrongly embarked on the strategy of producing mass doctorates without focusing on quality. There are very few people in the country who have the ability to introduce the right quality of training for doctoral candidates. Furthermore, those that are well-qualified do not have the incentive or the courage to introduce quality.

The fact of the matter is that quality can never be introduced in a political environment that encourages conformance with official views. This is certainly true of social sciences which have gradually deteriorated as a discipline. An academic environment, especially in the universities, depends on a free flow of ideas, and debate between opposing points of view. Pakistan severely lacks in research and analysis, particularly in the realm of theory formation and conceptualisation. The universities in the country have failed to encourage serious academic writing and theorising. The poor pay scales are part of the problem. Researchers and academics have no incentive to develop concepts mainly because there is, on the whole, discouragement to produce works which might challenge ideas that are adverse to the establishment’s point of view.

Most of the works produced by university professors are confined to empirical work. The budding scholars are often bought by the state by making them extraordinary offers in the form of incentives. In the past few years, some of the young scholars in the social sciences were even informally inducted to sell the country’s positive image through propagating the establishmen’ts point of view. For this, they are marketed abroad and nationally and provided opportunities to travel abroad or to appear on television networks. The main criterion is relative fluency in English and the willingness to speak and write on the government perspective. This is what the Italian political philosopher, Antonio Gramsci would call establishing elite which, in this case, is military’s hegemony. The propaganda is meant to control the minds of the people internally more than anything else. Hence, it is not surprising that the university classrooms appear more like intellectual graveyards where students are not ready to accept alternative points of view. The faculties are largely incapable of teaching their students about different paradigms.

The primary notion revolves round a state-centric and redundant representation of nationalism and a realist perspective. This is not to suggest that there is anything wrong with various points of view. However, a healthy university environment requires experimentation with numerous paradigms and free flow of ideas. New concepts and ideas are generated through a discussion between opposing or alternative viewpoints.

It must be understood that universities such as MIT, Harvard or others are known for accommodating all sorts of views. So, while MIT favours those with a realist view, it also pays for people like Naom Chomsky whose views might not be acceptable to the American establishment. A similar environment is found in the South Asian region as well. Actually, it is not so much about accommodation. It is rather about the capacity to generate quality debate that then determines the strength of R&D in an academic institution.

In Pakistan, unfortunately, free thinking is equated with anti-nationalism which is entirely unacceptable to the state. The public sector universities encourage historians, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and political scientists who can only present a state-centric approach. This has resulted in a situation where senior professors tell young scholars to adopt a perspective considered less offensive to the state. For such preachers the issue is hardly generating debate but to survive in a system that is extremely unsympathetic to a plurality of opinions. Their lesson to the younger generation is to be able to survive rather than shine as independent thinkers.

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising for expatriate Pakistanis with good qualifications to venture back to the country for them. Of course, the poor pay scales make matters worse. However, it must be reiterated that pay scale is one of the issues and not the key problem. Surely, this problem is part of the larger issue of the peculiar political culture of the state. Pakistan has developed as a military-cum-civilian-authoritarian state where the ruling elite is averse to the idea of any one challenging the existing power structure. The prevailing notion is that the nation-state is constantly threatened and can only be saved through a particular power structure. Any historical or political debate that questions the status quo is entirely unacceptable.

Hence, it is not surprising to see public sector universities suffer from a lack of quality. What is not understood is the fact that foreign publications or journals avoid publishing state propaganda pieces. So, one would not come across a lot of Pakistan-based academics pieces in international journals of repute.

One wonders if this reality is understood by the top policy makers of the country. In a presentation to an American audience in 2005, the finance adviser, Salman Shah, spoke about the need to invest in the private sector university system rather than the poor-performing public sector universities. His approach was that universities such as Aga Khan and Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums) deserved greater attention because of their efficacy and better performance. The finance advisers recipe would be a death knell for public sector universities that, in any case, are short of resources. In addition, this would mean introducing a highly elitist system of education and fewer opportunities for the underprivilged.

Perhaps, in its earnestness to compete internationally the government is willing to ignore the right of the common people to get quality education. What must be understood, however, is that if Pakistan wants to improve the quality of education, especially higher education, it will have to allow its institutions to think and behave freely. Improving quality will need a quality analysis of the ongoing problem of higher education in the country.

The writer is a military analyst.

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