Restructuring Higher Education in Pakistan

Dr. M. Ashraf Adeel*

The challenges facing Pakistan in the socio-economic and educational sectors are overwhelming. Our participation rate in tertiary education is among the lowest in the world whereas neighboring India is globally the third largest producer of college/university degree holders, falling behind only China and the US. Moreover, the quality of our tertiary degrees, in many cases, falls drastically short of international benchmarks. As a result the overall moral and educational caliber of our society, as well as leadership at various levels has suffered from huge deficiencies. We are today bogged down in a mess of poverty, illiteracy, half-baked education, and extremism. No society can hope to come out of such a mess without broadly educating its people, highly educating its leaders in all sections of its life, and inculcating critical and scientific thought in its people, particularly the youth. Therefore, if we really understand our situation, the next decade or so in the life of national institutions like Higher Education Commission, HEC, are of the greatest significance for the very survival of our nation. The critical question then is how can we dig ourselves out of the quagmire we find ourselves in through expansion and qualitative improvement of our higher education.

I believe that we need a basic restructuring of our higher education to successfully address our current national crises in the long haul. First thing I propose in this regard is to bring our Bachelor degrees at par with international standards. It is a good thing that HEC has already instituted and encouraged 4 years Bachelor degrees in the country. This initiative needs to be augmented by requiring all institutions to phase out two years Bachelor degrees in natural and social sciences as well as humanities and allowing only 4-5 years degrees. But more critically we need to introduce the component of what is called General Education, GE, into the curricula for all degrees. Nobody should be able to get a Bachelor degree in sciences (both natural and social), medicine and engineering, or humanities without completing a certain number of credit hours in subjects falling under GE. For example typically one needs to complete around 120 credit hours for earning a Bachelor degree. Out of these one would earn about 80 credits in his/her major and the rest would be in GE. This distribution might vary in different universities or countries but through GE courses students are given well-rounded exposure to history of world civilizations, world religions, some world literature, Mathematics, at least one Natural Science course for students of Humanities and Social Sciences, Social Science and Humanities courses for students majoring in Natural Sciences, Computer Science course, a course in Critical Thinking and/or Logic, a course in Ethics, a course or two in Health and Wellness or physical education, and writing-intensive courses as well as courses in Oral Communications. In addition everybody should do at least one credit hour worth of social or community service.

We’ll continue to have Pakistan Studies and Islamic Studies as part of our GE program. The point, however, is that we need to broadly educate all our bachelor degree holders so as to inculcate in them critical and scientific thought and an awareness of the natural world and cultural diversity of human family. Without such an exposure our youth cannot attain competitive abilities for positive life in today’s global village and can turn myopic and, sometimes, self-destructive through narrow fanatical views.  

In addition, all curricula, from undergraduate to PhD level, including professional degrees, need to be systematically revised to update and modernize them and bring them at a par with comparable courses in the best institutions of the world. A cycle of curricula revision, with the help of best experts in different fields, needs to be started immediately with equal emphasis on quality for all branches of knowledge. Such a cycle should be repeated periodically.

Also as Pakistan needs to build human resources in sciences and technology, in order to catch on with its neighbors and the equivalent countries in Asia at large, we need to enhance production of PhDs in the country. This requires a strong undergraduate academic program and a careful assessment of the situation on the ground. HEC needs to galvanize the undergraduate, graduate and PhD programs in all the universities and colleges through systematic expansion of faculty, labs, research funding, and increased connectivity to worldwide digitalized educational resources. All admissions including those of PhD scholars plus the recruitment of faculty members will have to be made totally transparent and merit-based. Also for enhancing the quality of teaching in the country, HEC should increase the number and cycle of refresher courses for college and university teachers to ensure that all teachers are periodically updated in their knowledge of their discipline.

Furthermore, mechanisms for production of international standard textbooks, research Journals, and scholarly books need to be established in order to enhance local production and dissemination of knowledge.

Another important step that needs to be taken, in collaboration with Academic Staff of colleges and universities, is to introduce mechanisms for teacher/course evaluation (quality measurement) at the end of each semester. It should not be made into an instrument of harassment of teachers but should be so organized as to help teachers improve the quality of their teaching. This is important because, as a thinker once said, “if you cannot measure, you cannot improve”.   

An ambitious program also needs to be initiated for quantitative expansion of higher education. I believe that a National Endowment for Education, as envisaged by HEC charter, must be established immediately. HEC should run national and international drives for raising funds for expansion and improvement of higher education in the country in order to be able to meet the target of 20% of Pakistanis to hold quality college degrees by the year 2020. The Federal and Provincial Governments as well as Educational Boards of the country plus Banks and other institutions should contribute towards this fund on emergency footing. These funds should be combined with allocations from the Federal Government to open at least 4 world-class Pakistan Institutes of Technology and dozens of additional universities and colleges in all the provinces to make quality education accessible to our youth in all corners of the country. We need to create “KNOWLEDGE CITIES” around the country to really meet the educational challenge and defend our ideological boarders. Number of the universities and colleges should be sufficient to enroll about 20% of the people of the relevant age group. This action cannot be further delayed. Otherwise, we ‘ll again miss the train with disastrous consequences for our future.

We also need to make a careful assessment of the existing and emerging local, regional, and global market needs for human resources so as to adjust our academic programs in the colleges and universities to meet the manpower requirements of economies/industries. Degrees in emerging disciplines and the existing degrees should be adjusted to the market needs.

There is one other area where HEC needs to play a critical role for our national growth. It must galvanize all the Institutes of Education and Research, IERs, in all the Universities by not only having their curricula revised to make them all four years degree programs but also create wings in them for ongoing high quality refresher courses for school teachers of Pakistan. We need to revolutionize our school education and this cannot be done without an ongoing process of retraining our schoolteachers. HEC can lead in this field. In fact it should open a model IER for this purpose.

*Writer is the first Vice chancellor of Hazara University, former Professor of Philosophy at Peshawar University, and current Associate Professor of Philosophy at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.