LAHORE: Nuclear physicist and activist Pervez Hoodbhoy has underlined a need for revamp of the High Education Commission (HEC) as it is not developing faculty for the educational institutions.

He says the commission is producing a huge number of PhDs who don’t have adequate knowledge of even the basics of their subject.

“The higher education can be managed by introducing some standards and adopting a systematic way of distance learning for objective approach towards education,” he suggests and adds that the number of PhDs is increasing in the country but the HEC is not concerned with their quality.

He was speaking during a dialogue on higher education reforms organised by the Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR) at its office in Gulberg on Tuesday.

Besides Mr Hoodbhoy, Government College University (GCU) Vice Chancellor Hassan Amir Shah, CDPR Chairman Ijaz Nabi and a number of teachers and students also participated in the dialogue. The participants also agreed that an effective and efficient HEC was inevitable for improving education and developing a strong economy.

Mr Hoodbhoy was critical of evaluation and quality of the PhD theses and research papers.

“We can resolve these problems by admitting our faults and we should use quality as yardstick to improve our universities.”

He said some of the private universities had adopted objectivity in education but the public universities of the country didn’t meet the basic standards.

Hassan Amir Shah said the HEC was facing problems after its devolution in the wake of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Rejecting the comment of Mr Hoodbhoy that public universities were not performing well in research, he said the GCU had started PhD programmes and some 50 people had completed their doctorate theses after being evaluated by the European countries in 2016.

Mr Shah said there were some problems regarding standards and quality of the PhDs but they could be rectified.

To stress his point further, he said the HEC’s autonomy should be established and added that the commission was overloaded with work and it was facing funds shortage due to its devolution.

Commenting on the private sector universities, the GCU VC said the private sector was providing education to the elite while the public sector was catering to the poor. He said the universities were facing a shortage of faculty, especially in languages, and a system could be developed to scrutinise the faculty.

CDPR Chairman Ijaz Nabi said the HEC did not have any vision to improve the economy.

“We do not have an economic vision to deal any economic crisis. We never develop any strategy to solve our crises.”

Published in Dawn, October 4th, 2017