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.
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