A pet textbook prescription in development economics is that third world countries should channelize resources towards primary education instead of towards higher level education as the social returns from primary education are higher than those from higher level education.

For, higher education tends to maximize individual gain more than the collective gain of third world nations. This pet textbook prescription has gained widespread popularity amongst the policy elite in the third world more so because it has been coming tied with the financial assistance from the developed countries.

Since the intrinsic merits and/or demerits of this recommendation are not evaluated independently, it is promoted to the same status of gospel that the bivariate relationship between the rate of interest and investment had been promoted to in our part of the world without appreciating that such simplistic bivariate relationships assumed all other things constant.

The relationship between primary or mass education and national economic gain has been bought into almost similarly without appreciating the environmental conditions necessary for converting mass education into national economic development.

In the absence of a supporting environment, either the mass education proposal would remain infeasible or would fail to realize the miraculous outcomes expected from it.

Further, even if it were to turn over into national gain in the presence of necessary external conditions, then the question of whether primary or higher education would become superfluous. For, the question is not either-or if the aim is to promote equitous development.

The issue is one of plugging the gaps of inequity wherever they are found. While these gaps should certainly be plugged at the primary level, the higher education levels should not be ignored as the process of removing disparities could not be sequential or concentrated in one area only.

Also, in the process of promoting mass education, inequities should not widen at the higher education levels which would certainly be the case if efforts at the primary and higher levels of education are viewed as mutually exclusive.

It is important to understand the argument against government support to higher education in the third world. This argument is a sweeping generalization that may not fit all cases including that of Pakistan.

The argument goes like this that only the rich reach higher levels of education in third world countries as the poor tend to drop out at the primary levels. If the education is subsidized at higher levels, the government would actually be subsidizing the education of the wealthy and would thus be promoting more dualism.

Instead, the argument continues, the wealthy at higher levels should be made to pay for themselves and the resources should be alternatively channelized to the primary levels in the interest of equity.

While this assumption of only the wealthy reaching higher levels of education is fallacious, those who read into it in isolation of other development economics' concepts draw equally flawed conclusions.

For, even if the first world development economists do not realize that mostly the low-middle income students reach the tertiary stage, the experts in the developing countries and their policy elite ought to interpret in the context of the specific ground realities peculiar to their own countries.

Secondly, the oversight of the first world experts ought to be read in the third world in the context of other development concepts the first world keeps generating for our benefit.

To read their one prescription about mass education in complete isolation of all the other factors required for development is to again propose an underspecified model for our development.

This under-specification is at the roots of our underdevelopment which would be a digression to repeat again in this article which focuses on the issue of whether primary or higher education when equitous development, inter alia, requires both at the same time in parallel.

For, it is the poorest of the low-income segments that drop out at the primary levels, primarily because their appetite for education is at its lowest given their other day-to-day survival requirements that remain high on their agenda.

Given their low demand for education, an increased supply of primary education is not going to help unless those comprising about 38 per cent of the country's population are lifted out of abject poverty.

As for those who are not so poor, even though their demand for education is a function of job opportunities, there are many from amongst this disadvantaged group that go past the barriers and reach higher levels of education.

All those enrolled at higher levels are, therefore, not necessarily wealthy but come up mostly from the low-middle and middle-income groups. The wealthiest actually tap sources of higher education abroad and do not want to carry on within the country. The profile of majority of students in the country's colleges, universities, and professional institutes does not smack of wealth.

Rather, they are the struggling low- and middle-income groups trying to get somewhere in life. To withdraw subsidies for their higher education is to deprive the needy from amongst the underprivileged segments from higher education.

The space thus created will be taken up by the less competitive affluent students who will then go on to occupy decision-making positions in the country. The gulf between the privileged and the ones less so is only likely to widen if higher education seats are sold only to those who can afford to pay high fees but cannot find admissions abroad primarily due to their incompetitiveness.

As the less competent from the affluent segments will thus replace the highly competitive students from low-income groups, dualism will only aggravate. Even if scholarships are provided on the basis of need-cum-merit, access for the low-income meritorious will stand drastically reduced and replaced with considerably higher access for the less competent but with a higher power of the purse.

In this market-based higher education system, the competition will be reduced to one between the few more competent but less privileged and the many less competent but more privileged students.

Not only will it have an adverse effect on educational standards that are already declining but it will also spill over into even more deteriorating future standards of performance and governance in various spheres of the society. The question of inculcating development attitudes will recede even further into the future.

While attitudes regarding civic sense, self-discipline, health, and hygiene should certainly be developed at the primary levels of education; the attitudes regarding broader aspects of national life and development merit the attention of higher level education.

It is at this level that the anti-development attitudes of dishonesty, lack of integrity, desire to take short cuts instead of hard work, and greed can be challenged effectively through thought, speech, and action of educators at these levels.

For, it is only at these levels that some of the essentially required attitudes for development can be placed against the perspective of national development and can be communicated as such.

So, attitude building is not a task that can end at the primary levels of education. Rather, it begins at the primary level and goes on throughout the various stages of learning which, if ignored at any level, will not produce the well-rounded mindsets required essentially for development activity in the various spheres of national life.

This aspect of education is particularly arduous in a society that tends to discount development attitudes and places a premium on everything anti-developmental.

Unless this role is seen for higher levels of education, it will not provide the guiding light that academia are supposed to provide to the society as a part of their leadership role.

With greater emphasis on ability-to-pay for higher education rather than academic potential to acquire education at this level, higher education will degenerate further into the role of that follower that has to "adjust" (read lower academic standards) to cater to their affluent target market.

This will feed into a further lowering of performance standards in real life which actually require a drastic turnaround. National development will remain a far cry not only because of the above reasons but also because we will have placed all our eggs in the basket of primary education which alone cannot deliver in the absence of an equitous system likely to be made more inequitous if higher education too is factored out of an already under-specified development model tailored for us abroad.