HEC Facing Serious Financial Crunch

Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman says that the HEC is facing a mojor financial crisis much like the rest of the country. This is a serious setback to the recent progressions in the higher education in the country. He said that all new projects for this year have been frozen while work on previous projects is also being affected. A total of 85 new projects have been frozen. He added that the expenditure on each student has gone up by 30% owing to the recent inflation, increases in salaries and the devaluation of rupee. This effectively means a 30% cut in the budget of universities.

This is most certainly a serious blow to the PhD programs. My friend’s brother who has gone abroad on HEC scholarship is worried for the future of his scholarship and according to him, his funding is likely to stop due to the government’s lack of interest towards higher education.

Six foreign universities were chartered to open in Pakistan, and their future is also in doubt now.

What is disappointing to see is that this issue hardly gets any attention in the media. In fact, this should have been making headlines and featuring on talk shows.

ThaNation once published a related news article here.

Once again, hats off to DAWN News for interviewing the HEC Chairman and featuring this in the headlines of their news where other TV channels are making headlines with the London Fashion Week.

The HEC needs serious attention otherwise it can wither away just like the National Internship Program was scrapped.

Why the HEC is a National Asset

May 2008: One of the issues of great national importance, frequently discussed in recent weeks in the media and on TV, emanates from a recent statement made by the honourable Minister of Education Mr Ahsan Iqbal, expressing his view to change the status of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) back to it’s precursor organisation, the University Grants Commission (UGC).

While many positive comments have been made in support of the HEC, there were a few that spewed negative criticism of the latter. In this article, I venture to make some comments based on my own long observations of over 50 years on the subject, in my capacity both as former professor at the University of Karachi and later as senior official at UNESCO, headquarters, Paris.

Education in general and higher education in particular is increasingly recognised as a wealth (human capital) producing industry. This is based on the idea that all economies are essentially knowledge-based, thus attaching considerable importance to its role in the context of national development.

Pakistan’s educational system is cited in several international forums as a major impediment to achieving its potential.

The situation was akin to a chaos in the brickyard of education, where the bricklayers and the brick-makers (the teachers and scientists) lacked the required understanding to construct an edifice capable of providing satisfactory services to its user’s community at the national level. Poor quality of teaching and research in all disciplines of sciences and education in the vast majority of our universities remained abound.

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Pakistan's Universities – Problems and Solutions

I came across this beautiful article written by renowned Dr. Pervez Hoodhboy at Chowk which discusses most of the problems in Pakistani universities at length. He also proposes some solutions which are quite logical. I found most of the article genuinely intriguing and close to reality. I do disagree with some points but Dr. Pervez surely has the facts and figures to explicate his points. The paragraph below is just one example of how relevant his observations are. The link to the complete article is given in the end.

….Because bad teaching quality largely comes from having teachers with insufficient knowledge of their subject, it is important both to have better teacher selection mechanisms and to create large-scale teacher-training academies in every province. Established with international help, these academies should bring in the best teachers as trainers from across the country and from our neighbours. It is hard to see any trainers coming from western countries, although one should try to get them. This effort will cost money and take time – perhaps on the order of a billion dollars over 5 years. These high-quality institutions should have a clear philosophy aimed at equipping teachers to teach through concepts rather than rote learning, use modern textbooks, and emphasize basic principles of pedagogy, grading, and fairness. They should award degrees to create an incentive for teachers to go there and to do well…..

Complete article link: http://www.chowk.com/articles/13507