KHYBER Pakhtunkhwa Universities (Amendment) Act, 2015, passed last week, mandates that the vice-chancellor of Khyber Medical University, Peshawar, should have an MBBS or equivalent medical degree from a foreign university, with a fellowship or a PhD in relevant discipline.

This implies that nobody with a primary medical degree from Pakistan can be the vice-chancellor. This is ridiculous!

Quite simply, finances do not disallow most Pakistanis to proceed to a foreign country for their first professional degree. Moreover, foreign scholarships at the undergraduate level are usually scarce. Therefore, usually only those from affluent backgrounds get their bachelor’s degrees from foreign universities. Even so, they are not always our best students.

As competition for admission to local medical universities gets intense, many who cannot secure admission here opt for Chinese, Central Asian or Eastern European universities. Clearly, then the criteria for admission cannot be tougher there.

After having got the MBBS or an equivalent medical qualification, however, many Pakistani graduates do opt for a foreign specialisation as it is financially feasible: research-based postgraduate study, especially a PhD is often funded with scholarships. Moreover, medical specialisation usually involves on-job training while earning.

Thus, precluding a local graduate from holding the premier academic post at the Khyber Medical University makes no sense. Instead, the government is better advised to keep the same policy as for all other universities in the province.

Dr Raja M. Atif Azad

Limerick, Ireland

Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2015

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