THE quality of higher education in Pakistan has deteriorated during the last decade, pulling down the ranking of Pakistani universities internationally. In spite of vigorous agenda and investments by the government, none of the top 10 universities ranked by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in 2015 were placed amongst the top 500 universities in the global ranking of 2016. Only two Pakistani universities managed to grab a position among the top 500 in the QS international ranking of 2018-19. Ironically, the HEC stopped ranking universities after 2015, leaving most of the students of higher education with no credible information for their academic future.

Some major functions of the HEC include developing policies and guidelines for higher education institutions (HEIs), evaluating their performance, supporting their linkages with industry for research, providing funding to public-sector HEIs, and facilitating the development of educational programmes in line with the needs of the employment market. Unfortunately, it has failed time and again.

For instance, the quality assurance agency (QAA) within the HEC was established to promote, enhance and assure the quality of higher education across HEIs. But, the credibility of assessment, verification and validation of quality provisions by QAA led the HEC to stop ranking the HEIs at all.

The demand for higher education in Pakistan resulted in the mushroom growth of higher education and degree-awarding institutions during the last couple of decades. With a consistent rise in tuition fees and other related charges, higher education became a profitable venture, with private-sector institutions expanding their infrastructure and providing facilities to the students to attract and maximise enrolments. Public-sector institutions also took advantage of this to strengthen their income source. But, the HEIs did not introduce new policies in line with the emerging market trends and kept relying on the declining support of the government for major areas of improvement.

The rationale for increasing the number of PhD researchers in a knowledge-based economy is to develop capacity for research and development in higher education systems. Scale and quality of research and supporting infrastructure foster demand for an industry-academia relationship, with the technology-absorption capacity of the industries and research output in the universities matching each other.

The HEIs, instead of creating demand for PhDs in the industrial sector, cultivated means to drain the potential of research scholars by providing them non-research-based career options. Foreign-funded PhD programmes were not encouraged mainly because many Pakistani scholars either preferred not to return or found interest in management positions rather than contributing to the scholarly work.

Globally, higher education systems are transforming education for sustainable development concepts to meet post-Covid challenges and improve future prospects, whereas the institutions at our end, like HEC, QAA, the National Academy for Higher Education, and the Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialisation, are focussed on strengthening the prevailing system which has no logical relationship with the prevalent economic needs.

There is no doubt that the future of nations rests with the potential of skilled and educated youth. The HEC, as a legitimate body, is consuming a bulk of public funds to support the HEIs which are unable to align higher education with the present economic needs.

Public-sector HEIs proclaim decreasing funding support of the government as the only reason for their low performance and deviation from their mandated roles. Widespread mismanagement, corrupt practices and injudicious use of resources in the HEIs should be reviewed in the larger public interest.

Nadeem Hassan
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2021