How Greed Ruins Academia

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Re: # 1
Masadi - you are the true voice that we all need in Pakistan.
Down with these sham Professors.
Up with the REAL Professors.

:)

Thank you Professor Hoodbhoy, for exposing the ills that our institutions suffer from. It is not surprising because a Pakistani trained scientist at best gets a job driving a cab in the west, and at worst ends up in Dubai as menial labor. Pakistan should stop science education altogether, and produce more Sociologists like Professor Masadi to save our country.

What a sad state of affairs. With sitting LHC judge
hobnobbing with under world dons to uni profs turning
QAU doctoral program into a cottage industry, Pakistan
is a mess. Where are the protests? Where are the talk
shows grilling these professors?

Kulli,

How may Pakistani scientists have you met? I know at least 10 Pakistani scientists doing very well in top research labs.

It is a shame that current QAU university students are unable to get good GRE score. I remember, when I left my univeristy (UET) in 2002, most of my friends scored 2000+ in GRE which was considered reasonably well. Well, may be, good students join engineering and medicine while rest of them study physics and mathematics at QAU.

Lastly, I have one friend (he happens to be gold medalist from QAU.) He is doing his PhD in robotics from Paris. A few days back, his research work was being appreciated on a french television where they were mentioning a new breakthrough in remote controlled robots for a medical surgery. While he was presenting his work, they were telling that he was a student from Pakistan. I really felt proud for the guy.

what a truly sad state of affairs.

I recently went to Karachi University and met some professors. When I asked one professor about his area of specialty, he just looked at me for a few moments and said, "I dont have any area so to speak, i teach whatever that is assigned to me."

That one sentence perhaps best describes what is ailing our public universities.

Charlie, as I mentioned before, Pakistan needs fewer scientists like Professor Hoodbhoy, and more internationally acclaimed highly published Sociologists like Professor Masadi. And, yes, I know two scientists including Pervez (the author of this piece).

Masadi Zindabad!!

Down with psuedo-scientists like Hoodbhoy!!

Sociology of Science zindabad!!

Down with Karl Popper!!!

Islamic Scientific methodology Zindabad!!

Ummahic Scientific Program Zindabad!!

Sometime, I feel the problems in Pakistan acdemia ( science Dept)is highly exaggerated. It can't be that bad. Remember Pakistan has exploded nuclear bombs, designed and produced long range rockets and believed to be ahead of India in military science and military is well trained and led according to military analysts.

So why someone cry," the sky is falling" ? This can only be somesort of personal agends.

Remember one can make very pursuasive arguments, but still one ( P. Hoodbhoy) could be totally wrong.
Kamath

laddu:
Down with Science.
Long live ranting.

Masadi zindabad........

Masadi for PM!!

Hamid Gul for Khalifa!!

Hoodboy is an Indian Agent.

He wants scientists to be like bhikmange Brahmins who study for the sake of study.

Science must be Ummah oriented. Science must be full of Islamic values and must corrobrate Quranic Revelations.

Science must be studied for the sake of Islam and not for its own sake!!

Dr. Hoodbhoy,

Adding a few dots to your worry charts, let me tell you that Karachi University has been taken over by extremely right-wing professors (I doubt their scholarship anyway!). In social sciences, the epitome of knowledge is no more a learned fellow, but a rascal from the gutters of Dr. Javed Ansari's peepholes, Wahab Soori.

95 per cent KU students have no mercy for scientific arguments and critical thinking, as their cult figures teach them "Beware of Science, And Get Marriaged as asap!". What the hell one can expect?


-E

#13 About ring wing professors taking control of Paki universities:

When I used to be a student, I felt that most of my religious minded friends opted to go back to Pakistan as they had trouble finding "Halal food", offering prayers during working hours, trying to find a lota for washroom (and some of them used to convert washrooms into swimming polls during their lotafication process) etc etc. They genuinely missed Pakistan and they ended up in Pakistan.

On the other hand, "liberal and secular" friends had no trouble with tissue papers in toilet, halal/haram and namaz stuff. Rather they were happy that they could have girl friends and evenings in bars and pubs. They got jobs in multinationals, opted to stay abroad to concentrate on careers instead of wasting their knowledge in Pakistan. (Exceptions are everywhere and I do have a lot of respect for someone who has the courage to sacrifice his career for his country.). So, most of them ended up in the west.

So, when all religious people go back to Pakistan and seculars remain abroad, what will happen to universities in Pakistan. They will be full of right wing Molvis. Well, That's what exactly happened to most of the universities.

#14

Apart from other aspects of this menace, I agree with what you have pointed out. I think when the coward runs for his career, the oppurtunist takes over!
I have often wondered as to what happned to once-progressive KU and its student movements. Later I realized that progressives left, right-wingers stayed besides getting scholarships abroad.
But who cares for places like KU or QAU! All liberals and secularists eye foriegn destinations. And so much true for their lives, that Individualism proovides ample food for their guilt-diet.

Good luck!
-E

Hoodbhoy sahib:

I find it hard to believe the woes you have listed. Pakistani society too, like all other, produces excellence. Only a fraction can go to the U.S. or Europe. What happens to the rest?

Are you trying to say that 100% of the Pakistani excellence has elite parents like professor Masadi's to send their wards abroad to the most useless of colleges for most useless of study like sociology?

Yes, intellectually bankrupt and ideological empowered professor Masadi Amkrika return from a college in buckle of bible belt like should not have any place in meritocracy.

It must be a tragedy that a system of meritocracy has not been created or sustained in Pakistan. Without which it is impossible to bring out creme de la creme of excellence out in a society. I know in Pakistan you have private initiatives, why do you not start a private initiative, and keep it strictly meritocracy based. Please do not involve the corrupters like Professor Masadi, else you will be spending time eradicating cancer, rather than enforcing meritocracy.