August 25, 2005

We in Pakistan should count our blessings, no matter how big or small. That is why one feels that we should be thankful to Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy for having blown the whistle on what transpires in the Higher Education Commission (HEC) — the body mandated with improving the standards in our institutions of higher education. The physicist should be especially praised because it takes a lot of courage to raise a voice against a wrongdoing in one’s own profession.

But wait! Before we move on, let me tell you in some detail what the controversy is all about. In the second week of last month, Dr Hoodbhoy — a professor of high energy and nuclear physics at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad — slammed the HEC’s policies in the articles he wrote for the print and the Internet-based media. He claimed that HEC doled out PhDs after making compromises on standards and wasted public money on dubious projects.

At the centre of his arguments was the proposed purchase of a Van de Graaf accelerator which, according to Dr Hoodbhoy, was nothing but a piece of junk since it had become obsolete. And more than Rs150 million had been allocated for its purchase!

It was clear that Prof Hoodbhoy — who did his PhD from MIT and who has been struggling against nuclear weapons for a long time, had written his pieces after considerable research. His references did check out.

His articles were remarkable also in their tone. To his credit, he did not resort to cheap tactics to gain an upper hand in the debate which soon followed. This dubious distinction went to the HEC instead, which wasted no time in responding to the allegations.

Dr Hoodbhoy’s arguments were totally valid, even thought provoking at times. His articles showed clearly that in most developing countries one needed to ‘watch’ the watchdog.

The HEC’s rejoinder, on the other hand, left a rather bitter taste in the mouth. The writer seemed to over-react and one could only wonder why some unbecoming remarks about Dr Hoodbhoy were included in the piece.

Also, it was obvious that the HEC tried to hide behind technicalities and regulations, in order to evade important questions. A case in point was the repeated assertion that it could not be held accountable for “the mistakes made by various university administrations.”

Having described in some detail why Dr Hoodbhoy’s articles were important, let me turn to why all Pakistanis should feel indebted to the man who heads the HEC –– Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman. I think, he should go down in history as the one man who made scientific and educational reforms possible in the country.

Dr Atta-ur-Rahman was the man who, as a minister, had convinced President Pervez Musharraf to invest more heavily in science and technology. It was he who pointed out that the 57 Muslim countries — with more than 1.3 billion people, owning 75 per cent of the world’s energy resources and 25 per cent of its other natural resources — produced only about one per cent of the scientific citations in international journals.

The total GDP of all the Muslim countries worked out to only $1,200 billion, which was less than half of Germany and less than a quarter of Japan. The main reason why this was so was because the Muslim countries lagged behind western countries in education, science and technology, contended Dr Rahman. His arguments were so persuasive that the government decided to drastically increase spending on education and science.

According to a presentation made by Dr Rahman himself, as a result of his efforts the government increased spending on science and technology by a whopping 6,000 per cent. And the higher education budget was increased by 1,200 per cent. “This,” he said, “represented a real beginning after 50 years of lip service”.

It is obvious from the above figures that reforms would be a non-starter without the increase in funding, especially when only peanuts were spent previously on education, science and technology. This doesn’t mean, however, that Prof Rahman and his HEC should be deemed holy cows.

The fact remains that HEC projects do have several shortcomings. Dr Hoodbhoy did a service by exposing them. The HEC should now do a service by paying heed to what the critics have said. And the government should ensure that HEC is made more transparent as well as more accountable to the stakeholders.

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