IN an exploratory letter sent to provincial governments and heads of public-sector universities, the HEC has asked for guidance on how universities can be established in every district of the country.

The initiative, though in the very early stages, is laudable but a few important caveats are worth bearing in mind. From where will the HEC find the teaching staff for such a large number of universities?

Primary and secondary schooling is the foundation upon which higher education is built, and for a country where large numbers of pupils drop out of school once they hit teenage years, an expanded higher education system is going to stand on a very weak footing.

Perhaps bringing higher education closer to the people can increase enrolment rates, but if the crop of incoming students has received poor quality education and university teachers are under qualified, the system can end up doing more harm than good.

Upgrading our primary and secondary school system is vital to building a quality higher education system in the country and moving towards the goals laid out in Vision 2025.

It is critical to keep in mind that education is not about quantity alone, but also quality. Increasing the number of universities can look like progress if one is simply counting the campuses, but weighing the quality of the graduates and the rigours of the curriculum is a bigger priority at the moment.

The HEC should be commended for taking an initiative to make education more accessible to the people, but it would be better if its efforts were matched by the provincial governments to reform their school systems to ensure that students are being adequately prepared for the challenges of a university education.

This raises a chicken and the egg problem. In order to have good quality schooling, you need well-qualified and trained teachers which can only come from a good quality higher education system. So improving the quality of education in Pakistan and making it more easily available for every citizen is a larger enterprise than what one institution alone can manage.

The HEC should supplement its initiative with a report detailing where in its opinion the secondary school curriculum is letting down its students, and make concrete suggestions for curricular reforms. That would help start a useful conversation in the country about all that is needed to improve the state of our public educational systems.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2015

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