Should Pakistan start a Virtual University?

I completely agree with Rdesikan # 7. government programs are not the solution to creating a ``knowledge economy`` (or pretty much anything else for that matter...). the best thing that happenned to india was that the gov`t, more or less, has kept out of IT, mainly b/c, as Rdesikan put it, they were too dumb to realize it was something they could meddle with. hopefully the indian gov.`t will have the good sense to keep out of IT in the future.

I have noticed that many of the more respected chowkwallas, such as umair khan, always talk about gov.`t intitiatives and programs when on the topic of ``pakistan and IT.`` to be blunt, the belief that government is the best instrument by which a country can progress is ignorant. the greatest wound to modern india, right up there with Partition, has been the socialism implemented by Nehru. its is responsible for impoverishing the country, while nations around the world, who pursued free markets and minimalist government policies, have thrived.

The only good thing to come out of Nehru`s socialism, was the emphasis placed on the sciences. the engineers and other scientific professionals india produced in the years since independence, through the IITs and other eductaional institutions throughout the country, are now serving as the back bone and knowledge base of the Indian IT boom.

while reading this and other articles, it occurred to me, instead of pakistan trying to reinvent the wheel with regard to education and particularly IT education, why not just piggy back off India? instead of trying to develop PIT`s (Pakistan Institutes of Technology), why not send Pakistan`s best and brightest to the IITs and other IT educational institutes already in existence throughout the subcontinent? I realize that given the current relations between the two countries this is nearly impossible, but to me, it seems pretty logical and the best hope for millions of impoverished pakistanis -- as it has been for millions of impoverished indians.

but i believe that there is an even larger obstacle to this idea then the current state of diplomatic relations, and that is the pakistani ideological hang ups to having pakistanis studying in india. the cultural differences a pakistani studying in india would encounter would be no different from what a south indian faces when studying in the north, or what north indians may encounter when studying in bangalore. yet i believe many patriotic pakistanis might feel that it would undermine ``the two-nation theory`` (the theory they have to know for O-levels?) if pakistani students were to study in india and so they would rather spend public resources (of which pakistan has virtually none) to build their own educational infrastructure.

absurdities like this better illustrate the pointlessness of partition then any argument over ideology. unforunatley, it is these absurdities of history which have opressed and will continue to opress millions throughout the subcontinent.

my apologies to all the pakistanis i have surely offended. i know how ``rude`` you find it when us indians point out these things. i know how sensitive pakistanis are about their history.

Hazrat Isa:

There is a couple I met three years ago in Toronto. They were based somewhere in the Carolinas, probably South. One of them was Taj Feroz or Afroz Taj (apologise for not recalling his name.) They used to teach Urdu/Hindi through live inter-action and the classes were spread over five or six separate campuses about 50-100 miles apart. They were here to demonstrate their teaching techniques to a gathering of teachers from Canadian Universities.

You article reminded me of that meeting. Another interesting aspect of the Net access would be the off campus and multi campus classes that can be delivered to the Pakistani student’s home, office or classroom from a classroom or home in Pakistan or anywhere in God’s wide world.

The ex-pat Pakistanis in the Diaspora around the globe can volunteer/deliver lectures from their homes/universities. And they can tap in local friends, teachers and volunteers in this effort as well.

This is worth examining in detail. I am sure the initial capital expenditure can be justified by the access provided to a large(r) number of students and the ultimate benefit education delivers.

With Net the prospects are exciting.

regards,

temporal

Why do you look to the government and by default, the bureaucracy for solutions? It`s like the henhouse contracting with the fox for its security needs. If your authorities got involved, the only virtual institution you can expect would be a virtual madrassah.

If you want a truly effective university, let someone in the private sector do it. When you throw in the profit angle, you`re bound to end up with a syllabus or program that is responsive to the needs of the marketplace, that is useful and will therefore be well executed. Admittedly, things like literature and arts will get lost in the shuffle, but you can`t have it all. Who needs Hegel when you`ve got Cobol?

The IT industry succeeded in India only because the government was dumb enough not to spot its potential and thus left it to the wayside.

Another thing: why harp for your own virtual university? There are a few good ones out there and few more in the works. If it is virtual, there are no borders. So why waste time and effort to create something internally when the goal is to be virtual. Why would anyone want a degree from a virtual university in say Lahore when one can earn it from an institution based in California?

Cheers

Distance learning using TV broadcasts and production/distribution of audio/visual learning aids seems to be already happening in Pakistan, according to this article. Would the author care to elaborate on facts and figures related to the impact of AIOU on higher education, such as enrollment, degrees awarded, courses offered, feedback?

If the already existing setup for distance learning has proved its utility, maybe pursuing the same goal via the Internet is not a difficult transition?

Plenty of material here, btw:
http://www.india.edu/adbanner/papersonnetlearn-main.htm

Sadhana

dear ferozk (#1)

``It took India nearly 30 years of a constant IT policy to become an IT giant. When was the last time you heard of 30 year policy being constantly implmented in Pakistan? Forget 30 years, when was the last time anyone heard of anything being implemented in Pakistan?``

er, what 30 years of policy?

the only policy initiative the central government of india took in the area of technology was in the then fledgling computer hardware sector, towards the end of rajiv gandhi`s time (late 80s).

that `initiative` totally deflated the industry: today indian hardware is nowhere. the government had left software alone then, mainly because it wasn`t seen as `manufacturing`, and therefore unglamorous industrially.

it is a subcontinental myth that government policy can drive industrial growth.

deng xiaoping cooked up his `one country-two systems` policy for the mainland and hong kong.

on the subcontinent, unfortunately, it`s still two countries-one system. the system of interference.

regards and apologies for the long-ish post.

aakar patel

It is interesting to read this article, since I my self have been thinking about this lately. Already there is one reservation about the idea (a well founded one) that investment,the establishment and the infrastructure will not support this.

Education over the internet does not need to be in the form of one institution investing loads of money developing and implementing a curriculum. No one should expect the whole country to light up with the `net tomorrow and start using internet universities to become PhDs.

Much like all other innovations and discoveries, things don`t need to happen in a perfectly linear fashion. While there may be few people able to take advantage of a ``Pak-Internet University`` currently, as more people come online they will already have wealth of resources a click away. And let`s not forget the network effect:

useful internet [like a university]-}more people online-}more incentive to provide useful internet-}more people come online to take advantage-}etc., etc.

Now, the main topic of internet education. I can testify that the internet educaton can do wonders. Basically the last year of my undergraduate educaton has been through the net. Most of the professors at Univ. Of Mich. put their lecture notes online. Although I`m not proud of it, I basically passed my last few semesters relying on the lecture notes on the web.

In my opinnion we need few specific things:

--Encourage university professors to put their lecture notes online.

--Encourage professors, universities or even NGO`s to record lectures (just audio should be fine).

--Encourage students, profs. and others to do small multimedia presentations on specific topics (an applet displaying various sorting algorithms in actions, a 3d model of a DNA strand, etc.)

--Encourage universities or NGOs (even individuals) to link all available material in a comprehensive easy to follow format [imagine a website that lists all courses for a computer science degree the way a university degree requirement document might...but each link to a course may lead to a course website of different university]

--Universities or NGOs could develop textbooks and make them available for free (I don`t know why this is not done more often...apparently there is a text book on south asian history (pak. and indian historians working together) that will be availlable on the web).

Probably the most important thing is to get a few professors to start taking this seriously. Once momentum builds, things start to fall in place. A few years ago most profs. would have laughed at the idea of allowing their students acces to class notes on the web, but once a few profs. did it, most others quickly joined.

.....other things that make me proud to be an Indian: Ferozk`s dire predictions about Pakistan which make even India look better by comparison!

Seriously, Ferozk attributes to Indian policy-making more coherence than is its due.

After reading the article what I would like to know is, to what extent is the present university system overloaded and unable to accept all the deserving candidates who apply? Also, while it may be relatively cheap to provide education over the internet as compared to the traditional modes, it is going to require a huge initial investment. Is it clear that this money could not be better utilized by investing in improving the already existing system? What about the quality of education offered? Even in the west the traditional modes are preferred over the internet version. In short, i am wondering what is the constraint that the government would be trying to overcome by providing internet courses?

-narain

The article was apt in the sense that it dealt with a key issue, but in a larger sense the idea of a virtual university in Pakistan is an up hill task.

For starters, one would need electricity in Pakistan to run the PCs and then require telephones to transmit the data, because satellites would be against the offical secrets act. If that hurdle is overcome, then one has to deal with ever changing bureaucratic policies, which change every nanosecond in Pakistan. There is too cultural opposition to an IT virtual university in Pakistan and the idea will always remain mired in the planning stage between all the committees and commissions, which pop up in Pakistan like those annoying windows with fancy graphics!

Besides, who will invest in this scheme? Will the investment cost include the added cost of corruption factored in, which is a value added cost for doing any business in Pakistan? It took India nearly 30 years of a constant IT policy to become an IT giant. When was the last time you heard of 30 year policy being constantly implmented in Pakistan? Forget 30 years, when was the last time anyone heard of anything being implemented in Pakistan?

This idea is nothing more than another national dream, which the country is dreaming! All in all, it is a good idea, but if wishes were horses...

Ciao!