How Greed Ruins Academia

Re: # 9 Kamath... You point of view is highly appreciated that Pakistan is well ahead of India in military science. But do you think military science can meet the demands of poor? simply put can it kill hunger and misery? What we need is an established scietific base of goods and services where common public public can get benefit

Haider Ali

Sir, You have rightly pointed out deteriorating situation of our public sector universities. Quality teaching and reserach is not our priority currently. There's need to stress research at every level.

i had not yet finished lamenting and empathising with the lot of our research scholars at international venues,congealed in a state of shock in "outer space", left in lurch by hec' s not being able to honor its committment to them for lack of funds!!;when i was brought back to earth", to see the hallowed "earth"of the University being encroached upon without check, as revealed in your article 'How greed ruins academia".and some pieces of Universityland being sold!!talk about illegal, the council does not see this as illegal and they have the heartlessness to call open lectures as illegal!they are planning to sell off university land, in such haste, why are not they waiting to see their "fast served fossil fuel" the one which atta ur Rahman got for them, by top heavy funding exclusive for PhD, to be run out of, first?
the standard will definitely be hanging at an angle down from the mediocre to definitely inferior.i would like to see where this herd of run o the mill phd professors are going to get their lac rupees per their own successful phd student, of which there will be a bigger herd i am sure.in the vast universe, the univs of pakistan will stand isolated as "black holes".the good bright students will have the only option of going to the other universities in the universe, which have a life, and care that they have bright students, who feel proud to take quality ensuring testslike GRE.i am sure even ata ur rahman wanted his enriched (no pun intended)phd students/teachers to have a sure test of quality to vouch for them!he did so much to have a good image presented to the International scenario......

Re: # 9
Kamath...
That is wrong assumption...
The source of these technologies are somewhere else ( most probably Pakistan obtained it via China)...These are just for the sake of flaunting....
Pakistan (and India too) publish too few papers of basic sciences, forget about nobel....a country, which can not design a good car engine, can not boast of technology...
europe,usa and russia are far ahead of us and japan is catching up very fast...apart from bits and pieces approaches from private sectors in India, the story may be similar to that of Pakistan...

Today it appeared in Daily Jang and we all are proud of being Pakistan !

http://www.jang.net/jm/2-21-2009/images/03_23.gif



Zeeshan Ahmed
Technical University of Vienna

Mr. Zeeshan Ahmed, 26 years old, have on record more than 24 years of education and more than 6 years of professional experience of working within different multinational organizations in the field of Computer Science with emphasis on software engineering of database, human computer interaction, distributed, MES / ERP and interactive complex systems, furthermore also have more than three years experience of teaching as lecturer and supervising research thesis to graduate and undergraduate students in different institutes and universities.

According to my interests, educational back ground and profession, I prefer working in Software Engineering (SE) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) domains, especially in Information engineering & Processing, Natural & Machine Language Processing, Product Life Cycle Management, Product Line Architectures, Measurement Analysis, Machine Learning, Multi Agent System (MAS), Intelligent Machine Interface Design, Semantic Modelling and Knowledge engineering.

Moreover I am the author of more than 70 International research publications as solo & first author, winner of more than 40 distinctions/awards/prizes and participant in more than 100 International research events.




University Distinctions


1.Completed PhD Course work with 100 Percent result (A Grade in all subjects).

2.Completed 4 Years PhD Course and Research Work in 1 year.

3.Completed MS Computer Science with Major Intelligent Software Systems 1.5 Years (3 Semesters) course work in 4 Months (1 Semester).

4.Completed MS Computer Science with Software Engineering 2 Years course work in 1 Year.

5.Completed BS Computer Science 4 Years (12 Semester) graduation program in 2.8 Years (8 Semesters).




Research Distinctions

1.Produced 67 international research papers & presentations as SOLO and First Author during PhD Research Work including International Conferences, Workshops, Journals and Seminars, (Pre-PhD Defense and 3 more expected as Near / Post-PhD Defense) , Vienna, Austria 2007-09



2.Produced highest research publications in Mechanical Engineering Informatics and Virtual Product Development Division (MIVP), Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna), Vienna Austria as First Author in Year 2009
Engineering Informatics and Virtual Product Development Division (MIVP), Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna), Vienna Austria as First Author in Year 2008

3.Produced highest research publications in Mechanical Engineering Informatics and Virtual Product Development Division (MIVP), Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna), Vienna Austria as First Author in Year 2007




Intelligent Semantic Oriented Agent based Search (I-SOAS)

http://www.mivp.tuwien.ac.at/index.php/I-SOAS.html




Research of Zeeshan Ahmed

http://www.mivp.tuwien.ac.at/index.php/I-SOAS.html



Academic Achievements

http://zeeshanahmed.bravehost.com/achievements.html




Tec hnical Experience

http://zeeshanahmed.bravehost.com/achievements.html


Homepage



http://zeeshanahmed.bravehost.com/index.html

Re: # 69
Dear Mr Jamil,
My pleasure, I am sending a welcome message.
Regards,
viewer

Dear 'viewer',

I would like to be in touch with you regarding some academic matters, in private. Would you please contact me at my email address: jamil.camp@gmail.com

Sincerely

Re: # 66

As it is discussed by others and has recently been endorsed by the academic council of QAU, the GRE test can be welcome if its original incentive is retained i.e. filtering students who wish to enter a PhD program.

When they are enrolled in a PhD program it is irrelevant to talk about appearing and passing the GRE test.

To me it makes no sense to ask a PhD candidate, who has already spent several years in obtaining some publishable results in research, to go and pass GRE test before he can be given PhD certification.

Secondly, in my opinion, in case an institution (like NUST) demands passing the test before making a PhD admission, the institution or the government should bear all the test administering costs.

By the way, I would like to mention here (thinking that it might be of interest to some) that at the place where I am presently working (which is not in Pakistan or in North America) I know a person who completed his PhD from a high-ranking US university some years ago (and, therefore, went through the GRE, the qualifying exam, and the other requirements there) but later could not establish a steady record of research publications in peer reviewed journals. He is now finding it hard to keep his job and is thinking about doing something other than academics.

Re: # 64
"Viewer I challenge you to produce your GRE scores, and I bet a million dollars that you are one of those losers scoring in the bottom 10th percentile"

Perhaps you have missed to notice Charlie mentioning that most top-ranking universities in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia and Japan do not require GRE in any subject … and even the top-ranking USA universities such as Harvard, MIT, Chicago, Columbia, John Hopkins, no more require GRE in these subjects.

Without mentioning personal details I would like to inform that I am covered by this situation and have never bothered about the GRE business.

"You should be ashamed of yourself comparing an MIT trained physicist with a PhD from some community college in Canada"

Firstly, I never have made a comparison between personalities and please indicate the post # where I have done so.

Secondly, you are perhaps unaware that an academic's professional worth is judged not by the place of his/her PhD certification but by the research s/he has produced or producing, and from the number of research theses for which s/he can be given a credit.

Unfortunately, it happens only in Pakistan that one's place of PhD certification is given very high importance. This is a simplistic approach as our meagre academic system has not much else to offer in terms of tools to measure an academic's professional achievements so we make our judgements by asking a simple question, "so, have you done your PhD from some ivy league university in the US?"

Believe me, after obtaining your PhD certification, which is supported by peer-reviewed and cited publications, no one will bother to ask, or will have interest to know, from where you got your PhD degree when you go to work in countries like UK, Germany, France, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia and in Japan.

I consider this a tragedy that a few influential scientists working in Pakistan who obtained their PhD certifications from US universities are trying to glorify their PhD places and wish to impose on Pakistani research students their PhD experiences in the US universities like passing the GRE test etc.

Come on, the North American higher education model is just one model and other countries have developed their own models that are successful, excellent, and do function well. Why do we need to align ourselves with the North American model?

QAU (or any other University in Pakistan) is not a research university, like e.g. Cornell. Competent candidates and competent Professors should welcome GRE. It’s a mickey mouse test that gauges only analytical and critical thinking skills and not much else. If there’s a problem with the GRE, then come up with something comparable to measure these skills, and have that test scrutinized, peer reviewed and tested.

I would again say that the condition of qualifying the GRE subject test to get a PhD degree is futile and spurious. The test can be allowed as the condition for ‘admission’ in the PhD only and not to get a degree. There are many PhD scholars who have completed their research, qualified comprehensive exams based on post-grad level courses with viva voce, maintained 3.5 CGPA throughout coursework, published few research papers in ISI journals and also wrote down their theses. But they cannot submit their theses since they have not qualified their GREs. Does all this not yet sufficient to get a PhD degree? Due to this spurious condition, many universities in Pakistan are either not following this condition. Some universities (like NUST: National University of Sciences and Technology, Rawalpindi) which imposed the GRE subject condition, its productivity of PhD students has declined. Consider its research institute CAMP (center for advanced mathematics and physics); the center was established in the start of 2004 to produce quality researchers in mathematics and physics, has not yet produced a single PhD since. Although the NUST University desperately needs quality teachers in math and physics, it has to hire a large number of M.Sc/M.Phil qualified visiting and contract based faculty members. Most of these staff members don’t know how to teach. Certainly these low qualified staff is not a match to a PhD staff.

Let us assume if some PhD scholar does qualify the test, would it ensure that he is also a good researcher as well? Would it ensure that the scholar would remain active and enthusiastic in research? In fact, NO. To perform quality research, a scientist needs curiosity and passion to do research. The traits of doing good research develop on their own in him.

Viewer is jumping so high may be because he was in the 20th percentile when he took a GRE?

Viewer I challenge you to produce your GRE scores, and I bet a million dollars that you are one of those losers scoring in the bottom10th percentile. You should be ashamed of yourself comparing an MIT trained physicist with a PhD from some community college in Canada, like this joker Professor Eatzaz Ahmad.

Re: # 44
viewer...

May be Prof Hoodbhoy was invited in IISc....IISc is good research institute. So are TIFR, BARC, SINP, ISI, IACS etc.. etc.....but pioneer of HE of yester years, i.e. Calcutta, Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai Universites are ailing...most of the students just love to collect one degree and jump into IT jobs...still may be .1% of engineering and science students do engage in good quality research...Standards of IITs are not improving....there is acute faculty crunch...
One stat will say you all...
India exports one of the highest number of students for masters program in USA,UK and Australia (may be after China)....
What I see is MNC research centres are realy good investment for India, whether it is Lab from Microsoft, IBM,HP, GE, GM ...

Re: # 61

"Research without a sound understanding of the subject carries no value."

Re: Is this the monetary value, publishing value, media value, marketing value, academic value, or some other value?

"the fact is that our neighbouring countries, excluding Afghanistan, have their students doing very well"

Re: So sandindia is lying in post 38

“The government must subsidise test-taking more than is currently being done.�

Re: Please first convince the government to pay all the GRE test fees and then put forward the GRE agenda

Here in below, I am pasting the reply of Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy in reply to my email. My email consisted of my interacts in #32 and #33. Here he goes...

Dear Mr. Jamil,

One must know the basics of a subject before claiming to extend its
frontiers through research. Research without a sound understanding of the
subject carries no value. The GRE's probe the candidate's fundamentals,
which is why they are required by many institutions. Although GRE's are
not universally required, in Pakistan, where the subject knowledge of
students is exceptionally poor, they offer a useful metric.

We can create any number of excuses of why our students fare poorly, but
the fact is that our neighbouring countries, excluding Afghanistan, have
their students doing very well.

I agree with you about the cost. The government must subsidise test-taking
more than is currently being done.

NTS: Again, I agree with you that ideally we should have this rather than
the GRE. But this will have to be after they create better, more reliable
tests. Currently the standard of the NTS tests is very poor.

Regards,
----------
Pervez Hoodbhoy
Chairman, Department of Physics
Quaid-e-Azam University
Islamabad 45320, Pakistan.

Re: # 54
Charlie...
As per my knowledge, GRE was never an ideal test to filter research students. It tests ability but not knowledge in specific areas...It will be good for each university to arrange specific test. Furthermore, GRE is very costly and should not be imposed on students of 3rd world countries, where HE is mostly subsidised....