ISLAMABAD: At a discussion on how parliamentary proceedings and democracy is studied at universities on Wednesday, the vice chancellor (VC) of the University of Haripur, Dr Nasir Ali Khan, said all universities in the country are “under siege”.

The VC explained that universities were no longer in control of their own operations, even on the academic front, and that the powers they were given under the law had been taken back over time.

At the seminar, hosted by the Centre for Civic Education Pakistan at the Social Sciences Expo 2016 at the Pak-China Friendship Centre, participants agreed that the curriculum on parliamentary operations and democracy needs to be revised and universities should be given more freedom in how they operate.

Speakers at a seminar claim universities face interference from government

Mr Khan said that at education policy meetings, there is often little representation from universities and the meetings are usually between government officials who “know very little about education”.

Talking about interference in the operations of universities, Mr Khan said that the chairperson of one a main political party had once asked him who troubled him when he was making decisions for his universities.

“I said, ‘your chief minister, your governor, the nazim and everyone else who has even a bit of power’.”

“I have been in the education sector for 31 years and in all that time I had not seen as much interference in education policies as there is now,” he added.

The reason why universities cannot take control of how they operate, Professor Dr Ihsan Ali, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan VC, said, was that they do not have control of their own finances.

“Of a university’s budget, between 40 and 50pc comes from the government and the rest it has to raise itself. When the government wants to pressurise the university and will not release the budget on time, the university will want to raise the money by increasing fees, which is protested by students,” he explained.

The vice chancellor noted that the education budget has gone down since this government has come to power “even though it keeps on saying that health and education are its priority”.

Senate chairperson Raza Rabbani said universities in the country do not have academic independence and that the reason for this goes all the way back to the creation of the country.

“From the beginning, the ruling elite have not wanted universities to have academic independence and this was stifled through a well thought out plan so that political tyranny can be maintained,” he said.

Education has never been a priority for any government, whether they were military or democratic, he added.

“We make policies and plans and set targets just to show the world and donor agencies. The plans never materialise, and the targets are never met. They are just a good way to secure funding from across the world and where the money goes, no one knows,” he added.

The Senate chairman said that the ruling class knows that to keep on ruling it is important to keep the people illiterate so it is easier to divide them on sectarian issues and toy with their sentiments, “because it takes a lot of work to subvert the opinions and feelings of an educated person to their benefit”.

About the way democracy, parliament and the constitution are studied at universities; the Senate chairman said the Senate had conducted a study of the curriculum that had “shocked” him.

He said it was found that “a most distorted image of Pakistan’s history” was presented, one that glorified war and dictatorship. He said that the partition of East and West Pakistan was dealt with in one paragraph in one book.

He said that the Ziaul Haq regime was particularly guilty of erasing Pakistan’s cultural history in schools and textbooks.

“That man did many things wrong by this country and one of the worst things he did was to put a ban on student unions,” he added.

He explained that this resulted in the lack of a counter narrative to terrorism. “He allowed extremists to talk in universities while banning student unions at the same time.”

“When academic freedom is systematically curbed under a policy, the result is that only extremist thinking can flourish,” he said.

He then listed off a number of programs that have been started to increase interaction between lawmakers and students.

One of these programs is a literacy program in which Memorandums of Understanding have been signed with 10 universities in the federal capital.

For the second phase of the same program, advertisements have been placed in newspapers for clerks of parliament who will be from universities. This is an apprenticeship of between a year and a half and two years.

IBA has been asked to look over the exams for hiring these clerks to ensure transparency.— SZ

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2016