July 9, 2005

A MASSIVE operation is under way to resuscitate science in Pakistan, claims the government. Not a day passes without someone boasting of some big achievement — a new university, college, equipment, training programme, award or seminar.

Foreign donor agencies and governments — who fear that an unskilled and uneducated Pakistan may become an epicentre of terrorism — trip over each other as they rush in aid. Over a period of three years, the higher education budget skyrocketed by an incredible 12 times and then was increased again in the latest budget from Rs9.1 billion to Rs11.7 billion.

Even if this deluge of money from the skies is doing some good somewhere, the flooding it has caused is doing enormous damage elsewhere. Wastage is occurring on a hitherto unknown scale, and a culture of sycophancy and academic corruption is eating into the last bits of honesty. Projects that bear no relation to meaningful improvements in science are being approved in desperate haste.

A recent example: Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, the chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), declared that Rs180 million would be spent on the establishment of a Van de Graaf accelerator at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad (Sci-tech World, June 25). For those familiar with this discipline of science, the announcement was nothing short of a bombshell. About 70 years ago, these accelerators were considered state-of-the-art equipment. But, like the ancient Model-T Ford car, they have now turned into mere relics fit for a science museum.

The readers who wish to see what the developed world is doing with such equipment today should visit the website . The site contains an obituary, written many years ago, which says: “After 38 years of service to the Nuclear Astrophysics and Material Science communities, (Caltech’s tandem Van de Graaf accelerator) facility has closed. Sorry to see the old machines fade away. This one had been very good to us. Not putting it too delicately; the machine was cut up and sold for scrap.” That scrap — or more likely scrap from somewhere else — is now headed for the Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU).

Still more inexplicable: the HEC chairman says that another Rs164 million will be spent on an experimental physics laboratory at the QAU. Alas, no researcher there acknowledges being informed about, much less consulted on, the purpose and nature of the laboratory.

The department’s chairman alone admits knowledge of the project, but refuses to divulge details. A pessimistic conclusion is that, as in the past, these millions will prove to be highly enriching, but not for science in Pakistan.

Does funding represent the only difference between our universities and those in our neighbouring countries? Are the institutions in our neighbouring countries better only because they get heftier grants? We would be deluding ourselves if we thought that that was the case.

Consider mathematics and theoretical physics, which are academically the most intellectually challenging and difficult disciplines. They need only some modest salaries, some easily affordable computers, paper and pen, blackboard and chalk, and, of course, plenty of brains. Yet these disciplines, which flourish in India and Iran and cost next to nothing, are almost extinct in Pakistani universities and scientific institutions.

Clearly, the malaise is a much deeper one. The real problem lies in the realm of ideas and ideology, as well as management of institutions and organizations.

Projects gone ‘astray’

Today, the HEC boasts of more than 350 high-sounding scientific and university-related projects, amounting to 25 per cent of the total number of projects being executed by the government in all fields. However, a visit to the website , and an intelligent reading of its contents, provides an evidence of how things have gone wrong. Some examples follow.

An HEC “Best University Teacher” programme has been extensively promoted and advertised. At the yearly pomp-and-glory ceremonies, cash awards each worth Rs100,000 are handed out to dozens of teachers. It is surely an excellent idea to recognize and reward good teaching.

But no student was ever asked whether a particular teacher knew his or her subject well, had the necessary communication skills, or could generate enthusiasm for the discipline. Instead, deans and

chairmen of the departments were asked to nominate the “best” teachers. Some named their favourites. Others took a more direct route and simply nominated themselves. Students at my university laughed incredulously when they learnt about the names of the individuals who had been selected as “best teachers”.

A physics teacher training programme has also proved to be a sham. In principle, the idea behind the project is an admirable one, which requires that the junior faculty enhance their knowledge as well as their teaching skills by attending workshops at some central location. But what if the “master teachers” teaching them know only barely as much, or perhaps even less, than the students they teach? It turns out that several of the master teachers hand-picked by the HEC, who are paid huge sums of money for every lecture, have poor reputations as teachers in their own institutions.

Such individuals are actually part of the problem confronting Pakistani universities, but the HEC has chosen them as the means of delivery. Cronyism and unfair selection have, thus, destroyed a well-conceived programme.

Is this research?

Funding scientific research was never been a priority in Pakistan. So it seemed as if a new era had dawned when the HEC announced the availability of huge monies for research in the sciences. It did not, however, take long for dubious things to happen.

Examples abound. According to the HEC website (under “Research Grant Award List 2003-2004,” Grant Number 247), a research project titled “Quranization of science courses at the MSc level” was awarded to Dr Saadia Khawar Khan Chishti, whose address is listed as “Higher Education Commission, Islamabad”. The grant award is worth a whopping Rs5.58 million. (www.hec.gov.pk/htmls/rsp/rgp/research.asp). The purpose of this project — to inject religion into science courses — is reminiscent of the failed efforts of Gen Ziaul Haq to create an “Islamic science”.

Even if one is sympathetic with the aims, how can one possibly spend such colossal amounts of money on something that is a simple library job at best? Until the HEC resurrected a long-dead trend, it seemed as if reason and common sense had won. Shall we now also expect funding for projects to release energy from jinns?

There are many other puzzlers: one project — worth Rs5.35 million — has been awarded to the Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) for research in a specialized area of chemistry which, according to the project summary, had been wrongly approached by a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry. But AIOU is a distance-learning university with no tradition of research in chemistry, and grandiose aims of novices challenging Nobel Prize winners are highly suspect in the world of science. Moreover, the principal investigator of the aforesaid project is not from AIOU and he already holds several full-time jobs at other institutions.

The HEC defends the poor quality of its projects by asserting that it is not responsible for the poor judgement of the referees. Can this really be true? In the early days of HEC some colleagues, as well as myself, often received proposals for evaluation. Some made no sense at all.

To give an example, one project proposal sent to me violated a fundamental physical principle — the second law of thermodynamics. Another project included a demand for a $90,000 cryogenic refrigerator for no obvious scientific reason.

Still other proposals had prices of components between 100 and 1,000 times higher than expected. One proposal requested a salary for a “computer operator” to run a laptop computer. When my colleagues and I rejected these as unsound, we found ourselves quietly blacklisted and we received no more proposals to referee. The authorities apparently had no difficulty finding more pliable referees, who approved the scientific-sounding junk that now litters the HEC website.

PhD deficit

Envy of India and alarm at a “PhD deficit” have driven Pakistani planners into setting absurd goals. The large number of PhDs produced in India — said to be about 5,000 annually — far exceeds the 100 to 200 produced in Pakistan. This led to an announcement that local PhD production would henceforth be increased to 1,000 annually, a 5- to 10-fold increase. The total number of faculty bearing PhDs, according to the HEC chairman, is to be increased from 2,000 currently to more than 20,000 over a period of 10 years.

This simply makes no sense. With very few exceptions, research in Pakistani institutions is mediocre and quite incapable of supporting genuine PhD dissertations. The consequence of “mass production” of PhDs will be a further erosion of quality and standards.

Although the HEC claims that it has screened prospective PhD candidates through a “GRE-type test” (the American graduate school admission test), a glance at the question papers shows that it resembles the GREs only in so far as it is a multiple-choice test. In effect, the HEC uses a shoddy literacy and numeracy high school- level test as a basis for selecting a scholar.

The ill-conceived move to crank up numbers has already had a devastating impact on academic standards, well before the first PhD is awarded. In my department, there are as many as 15 PhD students registered with one supervisor. In another, the number rises to an incredible 40 students for one supervisor.

The enthusiasm among supervisors for enrolling PhD students stems from a handsome monthly payment of Rs5,000 which is given to each supervisor by the HEC for every student enrolled (up to a total of eight). In this way, the new incentives have put pressure on departments to further dilute their PhD qualifying examinations. It is now difficult for any student not to pass them.

The implications are dire. What will happen when hundreds, and in time, thousands of incompetent PhDs are churned out? Each subsequent generation of such graduates will be less efficient and competent.

Eventually, these PhDs will become heads of their departments and institutions. When appointed gatekeepers, they will regard abler individuals as threats, to be kept locked out. The downward spiral will become even more difficult to arrest.

Reforming science and education in Pakistan has a chance only if it is clearly thought out and executed with honesty and integrity. The don’ts are clear: stop establishing universities at the rate of one every other week; stop dishing out worthless “advanced” degrees; stop wasting money on fake research projects; and stop corruption and cronyism in otherwise good projects. A financial and academic audit by international experts, who should submit their reports to NAB and PAC, is essential to check the current squandering of resources.

As for the dos, broadly speaking, these can be divided into two mutually distinct sets. One set must deal with creating a freer university environment, controlling campus vigilantes and stopping campus violence. These are purely administrative issues.

Another set must be aimed at raising the level of general competence of the teachers and students by ensuring that they actually have an understanding of the subject they teach or study, and with increasing the amount of research in specific disciplines.

More specifically, entrance tests for students must be made mandatory and these must be efficiently administered. Examinations at the national level are essential to separate individuals who can benefit from higher education from those who cannot.

No such system exists in Pakistan. Only local board examinations — where rote learning and cheating are rampant — are used to select students. Let us note that both Iran and India have centralized university admission systems, which work very well. Although corruption in India is perhaps as pervasive as in Pakistan, admission tests given by the Indian Institutes of Technology have nevertheless retained their integrity and intensely competitive nature over several decades.

Minimum standards

At the PhD level, if the HEC is at all serious about standards, it should make it mandatory for every university to require that a candidate achieves a certain minimum in an international examination such as the GRE. These exams are used by the US universities for admission to graduate programmes.

Thesis evaluation needs to be made transparent and subject to public challenge. The present safeguard of having “foreign experts” evaluate theses is insufficient for a variety of reasons, including the manipulation commonly made in the (highly opaque) process of referee selection.

Entrance tests for prospective university faculty must also be made mandatory. The educational system has remained broken for so long that written entrance tests for junior faculty, standardized at a central facility, are essential.

Without them, universities will continue to hire teachers who freely convey their confusion and ignorance to students. Most teachers today never consult a textbook, choosing to dictate from notes they saved from the time when they were students, often in the same department. No teacher has ever been fired for demonstrating incompetence in his/her subject.

There is much else that will also be necessary, including better and more transparent ways to recruit vice-chancellors, senior administrators and foreign experts. Training courses must also be executed efficiently and fairly.

To conclude, our science institutions and universities have become intellectual and moral wastelands. There is deep indifference, even apathy, towards scholarship and knowledge. Anti-intellectualism gags independent thought and action; it mutilates and mocks the spirit of scientific inquiry. There is an absence of basic academic values and casual acceptance of abysmal ethical behaviour by both faculty and students is common. Incompetence is rife. Resources are wasted on an epic scale.

The monumental task of reform has yet to begin. Pakistan lost Abdus Salam and Salimuzzaman Siddiqui a long time ago. And its scientific institutions may have to wait for a long time before someone of stature and integrity leads them out of the growing darkness.

The writer is professor of high-energy and nuclear physics at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad

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