tayyab rashid February 17, 2004

Tags: education , university , research , development

href="/tag/Pakistan">Pakistan.

A seminar on quality education was held on February 14, 2004 at a local university in Islamabad. The event was attended by more than one hundred nominees from universities and schools which signifies a prevalent and growing interest in raising quality of education in Pakistan. During a break, I asked one of the speakers how he would define quality. Instead of directly answering, he asked me which department I was representing. Wondering how this would help him define quality, I said I taught at Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS) to which he retorted “Quality cannot be defined in one line”. I offered him to use two or more lines to do so. I guess that did not help and our conversation broke up soon afterwards.

This conversation is reflective of the severe fundamental knowledge gaps marring efforts for quality in the domain of education. Unless this situation is corrected quickly, ongoing academic quality initiatives will fail to deliver results. Quality is not an abstract concept. It is results - measurable and visible. Failure to establish this link between quality projects and results can cause irreparable damage to the cause of quality in education. On the other hand, much is to be gained by carefully guiding these efforts. The seeds of a nation s destiny are sown in its class rooms.

Higher education sector today finds itself operating under pressures from a diverse set of stakeholders to deliver value, to continuously improve efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of its outputs. At a majority of our higher educational institutions however, existing management systems and culture remain inadequately positioned to undertake this kind of work. What and how of “improvement” and “quality” remain fuzzy. That is why we hear a lot of talk around it and see little action. Action can be facilitated by offering a structured framework within which these ideas can be discussed, elaborated and communicated and the work of continual improvement in quality accomplished in an objective measurable fashion. What follows is an outline of such a proposed framework being presented here for consultations from the wider higher educational community.


Quality is about continuous improvement which requires continuous measurement. Effectiveness and efficiency of the overall organizational system is a factor of the performance of its constituent processes necessitating measurements and collection of data at both levels. Identifying and establishing such processes with built in mechanism for data collection on carefully chosen process control points and performance measures provides reliable data and a picture of what needs to be improved, helping us to track and guide improvements. Knowing what we have in terms of a baseline process and its performance forms a solid starting point for improvement. Naturally we pick critical processes that reflect on the overall organizational performance.

Unless this is done, we will continue to encounter unverifiable claims and counterclaims about institutional performance and quality of higher education in Pakistan. It is possible to form unsubstantiated opinions about the quality of various institutions but what is needed is a broadly accepted standardized framework within which such calls can be made with reliability and effect.


Related techniques of Best Practices and Benchmarking can serve as useful starting point in moving towards this goal. Research, documentation and sharing of the above can help provide useful fact based insights into comparative performance of higher educational institutions. When used in combination, they will set standards for what is possible and demonstrate exactly how such levels of excellence can be achieved, in doable chunks. There is much to be gained by integrating best practices and benchmarking to guide excellence initiatives elsewhere. Benchmarking data can be updated at regular intervals to also serve as a critical input into the institutional rating exercise as planned by HEC.

Meetings of Vice Chancellors by HEC can be used as a platform for this purpose. Institutional leaders from leading institutions can be asked to present best practices on a pre-specified theme or a critical process for quality management - of course starting with core educational activities, followed by critical support functions - The Baldrige Education Criteria and ISO standards provide internationally recognized guidelines on this.

These presentations can be trailed by discussions, preferably facilitated by Dr. Atta Ur Rehman himself, where others attending can share their experience to further improve the presented process as baseline. Other VCs who are not presenting can be encouraged to come prepared to share similar processes in their institutions and performance data within that process area.

Uniform templates as are prevalent for documenting processes can be made available to allow for consistency, comparison and effective communications.

Outputs of this dialogue can also include process control points, process effectiveness and efficiency parameters, continual improvement goals, and outline of an optimal baseline process for the chosen theme area - something that every body can take away as homework for implementation at their institutions.

Once agenda for improvement of quality has been set at this level, these discussions can be backed up by supportive capacity building interventions, running in parallel, engaging university management and administrators in the process of developing, documenting and implementing the baseline process (as developed in the VCs meeting) at their respective institutions.

Such interventions can include training and may be even working closely with some of them where it is required to quickly bring them up to speed. These process implementations will have built in mechanism for measurable result oriented continual improvement, measurement and reporting guided by the parameters as outlined by consensus at VCs meeting.

Progress report on this backup activity should also be reviewed at every meeting. Installing systems will build institutional capacity and quality management systems, enabling them to respond to and proactively partner with HEC in its various improvement efforts.