October 28, 2007

HEC’s efforts in improving the country’s educational standards have come under enormous criticism. Rabia Garib presents another point of view

THE Higher Education Commission is bringing about a huge change in the higher education sector, a “silent revolution” as some put it. In the last few years, the universities have made tremendous progress through HEC’s emphasis on quality, and its progress has been dotted by numerous achievements. Some of the major achievements include the establishment of a digital library which provides free access to more than 23,000 international journals and over 40,000 text books from 220 international publishers. These are available to all public sector universities free of charge, and against payment at concessionary rates to private sector institutions as well.

One key problem though is a lack of quality higher education within the country. About 1,100 student visas were granted to Pakistani students wishing to study in the UK last year, which means that parents are spending Rs20bn annually to send students to the UK alone. The expenditure of Pakistani parents world-wide is estimated at about Rs100m annually. This is a huge burden, and this national wealth can be saved if we develop our universities to world standards. Moreover, not everyone can bear such high costs. Pakistan has a dire need for sound scholarship programs for higher education both inside and outside of the country, as well as links with certain leading institutes all over the world.

To address this issue, HEC has set up a large number of scholarship programmes, ranging from undergraduate scholarship programs to post doctoral fellowships. They have projects of over 35 billion rupees for these scholarship programmes and are actively sending Pakistani students abroad to major international universities in the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia. This will help improve our relations with those countries, as our scholarship and education ties can be expanded further into other sectors as well, including trade.

For undergraduate scholarships alone, the Commission has launched programmes worth over one billion rupees for both public and private sector universities. They are now sending about 1000 students to major universities throughout the world for PhD and Masters level degrees annually. They have selected more than 2000 students and have already sent 1300 students through this program, while planning on sending 1000 more this year in a program costing over Rs15bn. HEC is also contributing US$52.5m to the Fulbright Scholarship Programme in Pakistan which, at US$ 150m, has become the largest in the world.

Another critical issue is the quality of the education imparted in the country. With a lack of a standard training programme for teachers, and standard teaching practices, the education system had suffered a lot. To counter this, HEC has set up Quality Control cells to ensure the delivery of quality education and faculty in various universities in the country and has revised the curriculum twice in the last four years. The HEC efforts on constantly updating the curriculum to ensure that the most up to date education is imparted in all universities in the country are bringing about rapid changes in the quality of higher education. The appointment and promotion criterion of faculty members in universities has also been toughened to ensure that competent persons are hired. There has been resistance among the teachers community to these measures but this was only to be expected, considering the level of mediocrity that prevails.

The Commission is providing training to In-Service teachers to improve their teaching abilities and hold on their subjects, and over 3,500 teachers in universities and colleges have already been imparted training. Another positive step taken by HEC is the recruitment of expat Pakistani scholars from other countries under the foreign faculty hiring programme. Through this repatriation, the Commission is reversing the brain drain suffered by the country when these professionals went abroad in search of better positions and utilisation of their skills. However, the main issue pertaining to the education sector is the lack of quality and skilled teachers in all faculties, sciences, engineering, technology, business and social sciences. Another critical area that needs considerable attention is training of teachers, as well adequate incentives for deserving faculty.

To remedy this, on the recommendation of HEC the government has reduced taxes on teachers by 75% and has also increased the salaries by one grade. But perhaps the most revolutionary step has been the introduction of the tenure track system under which the salaries of teachers are now 4-5 times the salaries of Federal Ministers in the government! They range from Rs80,000 per month for assistant professors to Rs312,000 per month for full professors. This has created enormous interest among our youth to opt for academic careers in teaching and research as their first option, and will in time bring out major positive changes in the higher education sector. Smaller and less developed cities need the most attention as they have immense potential in terms of trainable human resource. The most crucial element for any developing country is a trained and skilled human resource pool; hence, setting up of adequate educational institutes in such areas as well as larger cities, with higher quality education is imperative for our growth. To address this issue major initiatives have been undertaken by HEC in interior Sindh, South Punjab, Balochistan and NWFP.

Several engineering and technology universities are also being established in collaboration with Sweden, France, Netherlands, Austria, China, and South Korea. They will be operated with the support of foreign countries and they will follow the educational standards of that country. These institutes will offer their own curriculum and will award foreign degrees, thereby considerably increasing our standing in comparison with the international community. This means that Pakistan could expand these educational links further into other sectors as well.

This is a considerable leap forward in improving Pakistan’s standard of education as they translate into tougher competition for all the local institutes and universities, hence improving the quality of education imparted throughout the country.

However, another critical factor in Pakistan’s education sector is the high fee structure of most private universities. Sufficient steps need to be taken to reduce such high costs of education and to allow all segments of the population to get higher education.

One remedy for less developed areas, and the far off cities and villages of the country is distance learning. The Commission is therefore expanding the programmes of the “Virtual University” as well as Allama Iqbal Open University as a means of extending higher education to all of Pakistan. Not only has this significantly enlarged the umbrella of higher education over the country, but this has also given all segments of the population the opportunity to get graduate or post graduate degrees at very low costs.

In the long run, these initiatives are the stepping stone for considerably improving Pakistan’s education sector and the human resource pool. They will also improve Pakistan’s workforce, as the development of the country demands extremely well skilled and highly trained professionals who can think out of the box, and build up our country.

We learn from our past mistakes; that is the only way we ensure that we do not make the same mistakes twice. On the whole, these efforts and achievements of the HEC are a welcome sight for the Pakistani education sector, as they act as the groundwork for a brighter and more prosperous Pakistan.