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Access,
quality and relevance
By Rabia
Garib |
RAPID advances in science and technology, especially during
the last several decades, have led to a division of the
world into a few countries which have advanced rapidly and
become producers of technology-based products and processes,
leaving other nations behind. In this new world in which
innovation determines progress, Pakistan has made a late but
spectacular start which is now resulting in the
transformation of our universities and centres of higher
learning.
The Higher Education Commission (HEC) was established in
October 2002 and Prof Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, FRS, was appointed
its first chairman. Under his visionary leadership, HEC
launched a very aggressive programme to tackle three core
problems in the higher education sector — access, quality
and relevance of higher education.
At the time of the establishment of HEC, a little over five
years ago, only 2.7 per cent of our youth aged between 17-23
had access to higher education. This compares poorly with
the rapidly developing countries. In Korea, for instance, 88
per cent of the students of the same age group have access
to higher education. In India it is presently nine per cent
of the same age group. HEC therefore embarked on an
ambitious programme to increase enrollment and there has
been a 50 per cent increase already. The current enrollment
is 3.7 per cent of this age group, and HEC plans to take it
to 10 per cent over the next 10 years.
The main challenge faced by the higher education sector in
Pakistan is that of quality which is closely linked to the
quality and creativity of the faculty members in our
universities. The higher education sector had been allowed
to deteriorate and collapse over the last 50 years,
reflected by the diminishing funding of the higher education
sector as a percentage of the total allocation to education.
In the first five year plan in the 1950s, the higher
education sector was allocated 32 per cent of the national
education budget but this was allowed to diminish to about
two per cent of the total education budget by the year 2000.
This criminal negligence by successive governments resulted
in erosion of the university education system, and most
universities were transformed to low-level colleges by the
late 1990s.
After the establishment of the HEC, there has been a
much-needed increase in the budget of the higher education
sector which is now about 14 per cent of the total education
budget, but the proportion is still far too low. This
increase must be continued by successive governments so that
we can reach international norms of two-third national
funding to the lower education sector and one-third to the
higher education sector.
There are some 11,000 faculty members in Pakistani
universities out of which only about 3,000 possess PhD
degrees and of these only about 600 are active in research.
HEC has rightly focused its programmes on faculty
development and about 60 per cent of its funding is devoted
to scholarships. Projects worth over Rs35 billion for
scholarships have already been approved and projects worth
another Rs25 billion are in process of approval. The
universities are growing at an average rate of about 15 per
cent, and the PhD level faculty requirements are at least
another 25,000 over the next decade. To cope with this
shortage of PhD level manpower, HEC has already sent about
2,000 students abroad for PhD, and it is now sending about
1,000 students abroad each year after a very competitive
selection process. This involves the holding of a national
test every two months in which 12,000-15,000 students appear
and the best performing 300-400 are short-listed. These are
then interviewed by teams of foreign visiting scientists
from Germany, France and other countries. In order to ensure
that they return on completion of their PhDs and are not
lost to the West, HEC has taken the following comprehensive
measures:
i) Each HEC scholar studying for PhD in a foreign country
can compete and win a research grant of up to Rs6 million in
the last year of his PhD abroad. This will allow returning
scholars to buy equipment and research materials well before
their return to Pakistan and help them to settle down in
their academic/research institutes.
ii) The salary structure of faculty members has been
increased dramatically, and Pakistan today is the only
country in the world in which a professor can have a salary
which is five to six times that of federal ministers in the
government. This has been done through the introduction of a
‘tenure track’ system in which faculty members are appointed
on temporary contract appointments for up to six years, with
two independent external evaluations being conducted by an
international panel of experts in technologically-advanced
countries in respect of research productivity and
creativity, the first evaluation taking place after three
years and the second after six years. Salaries are up to
Rs312,000 per month and the maximum tax payable by teachers
in universities is only five per cent. Grant of tenure is
given only after positive evaluation by the external
committees. If the evaluations are not positive, the
contracts are terminated.
iii) After a careful statistical analysis, HEC is sending
students for MPhil/PhD studies largely to those countries
where the standards of education are high but the ‘loss’
rate is very low such as Germany, France, Sweden, Italy,
etc. Countries such as USA and UK are being avoided in such
programmes, except for one programme, the Fulbright
programme, under which 640 students are being sent abroad to
the Ivy league universities in the US. However, in this case
2/3 of the funding is being provided by USAID and only 1/3
by HEC.
iv) Students being sent abroad have jobs to comeback to.
v) Arrangements have been made with the foreign embassies
that they are not given work visas abroad on completion of
their PhDs.
vi) Students are normally required to sign bonds and deposit
property documents against the funds being provided for
their education, exceptions being made in the case of poor
students.
Another programme focused on strengthening of faculty is
directed at attracting high quality researchers from
technologically advanced countries. This foreign faculty
hiring programme has been very successful and over 500
eminent scholars who have lived most of their lives abroad
have returned to Pakistan on long-term and short-term basis.
Some 45 mathematicians, largely from Eastern Europe (which
is reputed to have some of the top mathematicians in the
world) have been clustered in one institution — Government
College University, Lahore — and a world class centre of
mathematics is now emerging.
Under another programme launched by HEC, over 2,000 bright
young students have been offered indigenous scholarships to
carry out their PhD programmes within Pakistan. There is
strong emphasis to ensure the high quality of this local PhD
programme which includes passing of an international subject
GRE examination before admission into the PhD programme,
evaluation of PhD thesis by two eminent experts in
technologically advanced countries and publication of at
least one paper in an HEC-recognised journal. In order to
improve the quality of indigenous PhD students, HEC has
introduced a sandwich type split PhD system under which PhD
students have the opportunity of spending some time abroad
in a technologically-advanced country. A post-doctoral
programme for students completing PhD degrees locally has
been introduced by the HEC which allows local PhDs to widen
their horizons and get further training abroad.
These and other programmes are rapidly changing the state of
our universities. The real changes will become apparent in
about 5-10 years with the induction of thousands of bright
young men and women as highly qualified faculty members of
our universities. Some 250 young PhDs will return next year
after obtaining PhD degrees abroad, 600 in the year after
that, and over a thousand each year thereafter. That is when
the major impact of HEC programmes will be apparent,
although we already see a remarkable 360 per cent increase
in internationally abstracted research publications from
Pakistan over the last four years.
Successive governments must build on these and the many
other valuable initiatives of the HEC, which are bringing
about dramatic changes in the higher education sector in
Pakistan. |
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