Problems with Universities in Pakistan

The higher education system in Pakistan is going through a state of change, thanks to the efforts of some of the so-called business giants to establish universities as profit centers and of the educated ‘elite’ to turn universities into research centers. The first is called private sector, the second is the age-old public sector. Unfortunately all these have faced the same fate. The causes of this are multifold and require extensive study. The responsibility for their failure lies to some extent on the general environment of the country that shuns liberal thinking and creativity. But to an even greater extent, the responsibility lie on those who are educated enough and who could have made a difference. In this article we try to shed some light on these issues. We do not, and cannot propose some ‘ready-to-use’ solutions but do point out some areas for further debate. Also the focus is on undergraduate education rather than research or graduate education though these have similar problems.

To setup the scene, consider the claim of two persons who come to you one by one, each claiming that he or she has an idea of making a rocket in his backyard and travel to Mars. Now that’s an unrealistic idea, keeping in view the cost and labor required in setting up the infrastructure. To explore the matter further you then check their background knowledge and training in the respective fields. One of them turns out to be a motorcycle mechanic, with practically no knowledge of space travel and associated problems. The second one happens to be a trained physicist with extensive knowledge and understanding of the issues involved. Now my question is: who is to be considered a bigger fool? In my view, the trained physicist should be marked as a crook whereas the mechanic needs to be relinquished on the basis of ignorance. To put it in more direct words, the responsibility of not being able to handle the education system of Pakistan in a sensible way lies more on the educated class than the politicians and mullahs. We can use them as an excuse but they are not the real problem creators.

Private Sector:

Private sector in Pakistan, and in some other third world countries, has a very special scenario. There you find good teachers (though usually not good researchers) mostly because there they can get good salaries and the system is such that it automatically rejects bad teachers. But these institutions, generally, fail to attract most of the good students, especially from the lower and middle classes.

Even with the type of students and teachers the institutions have, they can try to do their best to improve the educational standard of their students. This becomes a bigger responsibility since their parents are paying heavy fees and their investment has to be justified.

Unfortunately, that is not happening. One of the leading private sector universities in Pakistan, where I had a chance of working sometime back, is a case in point. They, like many others, are trying to blindly copy some ‘abstract’ American university. There was a small collection of some of the finest teachers in the city, educated at the leading American universities, together with a bigger bunch of crooks of the aforementioned type. The team therefore was dominated by their views. Rather than looking at the real scenario where the university was working, and the type of students, teachers and administrators we had available, the dominant mode was to copy the working style of the American universities blindly.

For example, a common statement was “let the students be free in the class, let them do whatever they want …”

Now freedom of mind should, and does indeed come as a consequence of education, not the other way round. That is, by just making a person free, we may or may not be able to educate him properly. Take another example. Education is considered to be a source of light for a person trapped deep inside a cave who cannot see anything but light coming from the entrance to the cave. Our responsibility, as guides and educators, is to lead him to the exit point, telling him to calm down and not to jump or move around, as the terrain is unknown and dangerous. That way we will be able to take him outside the cave, to the light where then he will be free to do whatever he wishes to. If on the other hand, we let him free inside, he may injure himself and may come out with scars and wounds or may even end up inside the cave. We, as his/her guides, will then be responsible for this disaster. The same is the case with students coming to public or private sector schools and universities. If they fail in real life, we are responsible. We can neither treat them as Ginny pigs to experiment with our view, nor can we later on put the blame on administration, or politicians, or whoever else we find fit for this purpose.

Another frequent cry was “we don’t believe in punishments”.

Now of course we neither believe in physical punishments nor in mental torture. But the hard fact of life is that the consequences of bad behavior and mal function are no less severe than ‘punishments’. Life never gives you a second chance. You fail to complete a contract in time, and you are fired. You fail to come up with the promised software on time, and you loose the support of the venture capitalist. After that what happens depends on the situation. You may loose your job; you loose all the perks, etc. As a consequence you will fail to pay your bills, you will fail to pay your child’s school fee, you may also loose your H1 visa in USA or its equivalent elsewhere. The amount of mental tension and torture that you have to go through is worse than mild “punishments” like expulsion from the class for one day, extra assignments, lower grades, or simply some community work. It is far better to train the students to be punctual and hardworking while they are still in schools than to let them free in the competitive market where they will fail and will ultimately blame us for our misguidance.

Most of the private sector educational institutions in Pakistan have failed to understand that their students are not their ‘customers’ and hence it is not important to please them directly. Although I don’t like to use this terminology for our future generations, but if the terminology of customer has to be used anyway, it is important to understand that they are not ‘customers’. A customer, by definition, is a person who purchases something for his personal consumption and pays for it from his pocket. In the case of students, that is not true. The payment comes from their parents, or from scholarships and grants from the private sector. The students are to be considered as the customer-supplied raw material (or raw talent). Your customer therefore is the society that has provided you with this raw talent, to be trained and groomed. After some time, the society would like to have the same product back – finished, refined, and ready to serve the community - and at that time we will be standing in front of them and will have difficulty justifying our ‘utopian’ methods of teaching.

This is exactly what has already started happening and will happen with more severity in the coming years. One graduate (an MBA in Finance, to be exact) of such a University came to my office some time back looking for a job. I told him that the only open position is that for a junior clerk with a salary of Pak. Rs. 4,500. To my surprise, he accepted the offer. I didn’t hire him but hired another applicant who appeared better than the first one. After a few months of work I found him to be unsuitable for sales work and asked him to move to the finance department (remember he was an MBA Finance). In the coming months my Income tax advisor called me and asked what is happening in my office. He told me that according to the documents prepared by this MBA my company is making millions, its cash reserves are showing a negative amount and the balance sheets are not even balanced! That day everybody in the office was told he will not be reimbursed if he gets a degree or certificate from any such university, though that was the custom in the company before that.

That is the point where society asks what is happening at such institutions. Bad institutions will ultimately die out or will have to improve to increase their ‘profits’. To some extent it is natural to expect that “the survival of the fittest” concept will work here too and only the best institutions will survive. On the other hand there are two fears; even the fittest may not be fit for educating our future generations and, even more importantly, what will happen to the generations who will pass through the system before they are caught.

Public Sector:

The public sector institutions are traditionally considered as the centers of education and research and as such host to some of the finest research minds in the country. They also attract brighter students towards them. However, this situation is changing with the out flux of teachers to private sector universities and to the Arab countries where they get a better salary. Thus there also we are having problems of imbalance.

But rather than going into this detail, let me point out a pitfall in our educated class at such universities. While most of us keep complaining about the disintegration in the society in general and in political parties in particular, we have difficulties forming groups ourselves. Though most of us are educated at good local or foreign universities, we have somehow learned ‘how to divide ourselves.’ We divide on the basis of the quality of the university from which we have graduated or on the subject studied. Then comes the issue of relevance of the subject to country’s immediate needs. As if that is not enough we start dividing on the basis of race, religion or geographic origin. Although such boundaries are now getting blurred they still play a pivotal role in keeping us apart. The same happens to science clubs and societies. Rather than becoming platforms for thinking, research and development, they end up being ‘private clubs’ of their owner and his allies, better used for promotions and publicity than real work. Whenever a good proposal is put forward to do something positive, we come into action to find out the limitations of the person making the proposal, rather than the limitations of the proposal, which we can help remove. Then onwards life is simple. We don’t have to work hard together with the originator of the idea to put the idea into action, and if we are getting our salaries anyway, why worry?

Any attempt to make such problems public is handled by an iron hand. The usual comment of the ‘head’ is that ‘this will bring a bad name for the university, we should settle the issues internally.’ Now how the “settlement” is done is not important, the point is that when it comes to politics or religion we complain that the system is not transparent and that it should be made transparent so that everybody is accountable. But when it comes to us, we try to save our names rather than our views and morals. It is time that we put our differences apart, since these will always be there. We should start working for the ultimate good that such centers may produce.