PAKISTAN: Higher Education Hits a New Low

By Zofeen Ebrahim Reprint | | Print |

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Apr 16 2011 (IPS) - University students and teachers have taken to the streets in a bid to prevent provincial governments from taking over the reins of higher education in Pakistan.

The academic community has been in a tussle with the government since March this year when Parliament passed the 18th amendment to the constitution that, while turning the president into a ceremonial head, also granted autonomy to the provinces, and abolished ministries such as education and agencies like the Higher Education Commission (HEC).

For now, the academic community seems to have won a battle. The Supreme Court, after hearing a petition against the devolution, ruled that the HEC would continue until a new law was passed in consultation with education experts and officials. But the war rages on, with academics saying the provinces do not have the sagacity to make informed academic decisions and would not understand how universities function.

“Look at the mess the provinces have the made of the primary and secondary education,” argued Dr Jamshed Hashim, who teaches organic chemistry at Karachi University’s H.E.J. Research Institute of Chemistry. “Then weigh (that) with the progress made by the higher education under the Higher Education Commission at the centre.”

Hashim, who got a grant from HEC for his three-year project on microwave-assisted organic synthesis, would stand to lose if the federal government decides to hand over higher education to provinces and dissolve the HEC. “We have already bought the equipment for the laboratory from the 6.7 million rupees (79,496 dollars) I received and quite a bit of work is already under way,” he rued.

The possibility of his work being discontinued has given him sleepless nights. “My future looks dark as I will be like any other teacher without any practical work,” he said.

It also means his current pay of 85,000 rupees (1,008 dollars) may be cut in half, and his three-year contract with the university in peril.

The devolution will also affect hundreds of students and researchers studying abroad or working on their projects. The foreign scholarship programme is currently supporting nearly 5,000 scholars in 28 countries. Some 1,000 ongoing research projects would also come to a stop.

Hashim said he was able to complete his doctorate from the University of Graz, in Austria, only because of the scholarship he received from the HEC. Job offers from three universities came even before he finished his programme. “It was a big opportunity for me and to go abroad would have remained a dream otherwise since my parents could not have sent me abroad.”

The amendment was passed after a broad consensus of all political parties.

Senator Raza Rabbani, chair of the 18th Amendment Implementation Commission, has been saying that under the devolution plan, each province would be responsible for funding its own universities. He also gave his assurance that the federal government would continue funding universities till the provinces take complete charge.

But doing away with the HEC would leave things “unsettled for months or years,” explained Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, head of the physics department at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

Hoodbhoy, who had been a critic of the HEC in the past, said, “The Pakistani bureaucracy is notorious for its inefficiency, even in normal times. Here an entire institution is being killed without any credible substitute. One needs slow, nuanced, and carefully considered moves.”

Among those campaigning to save the HEC is its former chairman Professor Attaur Rahman, one of the advocates who petitioned the Supreme Court to stop the devolution.

“More Ph.D.s have graduated from Pakistani universities in the past nine years than in the first 55 years of Pakistan’s existence,” Rahman said. Engineering has witnessed a ten-fold growth, he added, while enrolment in universities has tripled from 300,000 to 900,000 in past eight years following the formation of the HEC. In close to a decade, 20 new public universities have been established.

Many have suggested that parliament’s insistence on abolishing the HEC has to do with the fake degrees held by the legislators.

Last year, the Supreme Court had ordered the HEC to verify the degrees of all parliamentarians. Some 47 degrees have been declared fake. With the devolution, the commission will no longer be able to carry on the task.

Rahman said 250 parliamentarians had educational records with the Election Commission of Pakistan that were not being forwarded to HEC.

At a recent press conference, Rabbani said the government was not targeting the HEC over the fake degrees cases. “The decision to devolve the education ministry and, with it, the HEC, through a possible constitutional amendment was taken way before the fake degrees episode.”

Most of HEC’s functions, including regulatory work on tertiary education, setting standards and making schemes to implement standards, accreditation, foreign scholarships and facilitation of university functions like the e-library and Internet connections will likely be carried out by a new commission. This means trimming HEC down and giving it a new name.

But Rahman explained that higher education was a central function all over the world. Besides, provinces were already represented in the commission through their respective secretaries.

He also warned that the 300-million-dollar loan approved by the World Bank last month would be withdrawn if there were no HEC. “Yes, this was a condition that the HEC will not be touched,” said Rahman. Another 250 million from dollars from USAID has been put on hold for the same reason.

Things seem to be looking up for the HEC advocates, with the Supreme Court voting to maintain the HEC. The petition argued that the commission was created through an act of the parliament and was not a subordinate of the education ministry and therefore could not be devolved to provinces.