LUMS -- Lahore University of mis-Management Sciences Basically the only real advantage `universities` like LUMS, IBA, GIK, UET, NED provide to their students is that they are generally more well recognised abroad, an advantage for those who want to study for their masters outside the country, and of course, because of their exclusivity here you can expect more students to get jobs.

Mind you, I still dont think that all the above institutions even classify as proper universities. Almost all the educational institutions in Pakistan are schools- mostly business schools, computing schools, engineering schools, medical schools and a few art schools. Thats it. The only three places (PU, KU and GCL) which offer a broader range of disciplines, including those in the humanities, social sciences and fine arts, follow antiquated courses, their systems being rigid and the campuses underequipped and lacking good staff and administration. It is also surprising that these and the two really good art schools in the country, NCA and IVS, have almost no international recognition, and are incredibly underrated here.

So many of our really talented students really have no choice when it comes to going to university. Its either go to one of the former few top places to do something you don`t want to do, although it most certainly will get you a job or at least a place to do masters from abroad, or end up studying the subject of your choice under the most miserable circumstances and almost no hope of a secure future. Thus it is that so many talented students who wanted to do their bachelors in say, Sociology, or Political Science, or English Lit, or Comms Design are found wasting their time and talent at a myriad of both elite and not so elite `schools`.

We really need to develop and market our few `real` universities, and otherwise expand our horizons in terms of the choices we give our frustrated youth.

Dystopia: After the cliché Great work Mr. Paracha!!! However, you could add these to the list:

1. Neuromancer by William Gibson, which set its plot in a grim cybernetic future ruled by huge multinationals, street law, and human degeneration under the ready availability of drugs and questionable technology like self-serving A.I, a virtual reality network similar to the Matrix, and and the melding of man and machine through implants.

2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which shows a ``utopia`` in which humans are divided into castes through eugenics, and forcibly kept happy through drugs and subliminal messaging.

3. Lord of the Flies by William Golding, which, while not strictly a distopian novel, shows how the dark side of human nature ultimately wins out over the niceties of civilization when it comes to the pinch.

Should I stay or should I go? Kudos to Mr Paracha for exposed the `new` media barons for what they really are, but really, all this is just another symptom of the increasingly suffocating, artificial, totalitarian, doublethink dystopia Pakistan (heck, the world) is turning into. Long live the brave new world our fathers created!