Jan 4, 2005
Universities in Pakistan
When the subject of education in Pakistan comes up in western media, the attention is focused entirely on the madrasa-system. However, there is a more acute problem in Pakistan - the higher education system - which has to produce scientists, researchers and teachers of the present and future.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, who currently teaches Physics at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad - the flagship university of Pakistan has just written the clearest denouncement of Pakistan's higher education in the highest circulation English daily in Pakistan, Dawn. I cannot urge you more strongly to click here and here and read.
His message is clear. Pakistan has no framework of higher education that can match up to the rest of the world. The universities are a quagmire of despotic clerks and professors. The PhDs cannot function in the real world. There is no standard of research in the country in hard sciences or social sciences. There are more mosques on campuses than bookstores. Knowledge is passed by rote and memorization in an endless loop from teacher to student to teacher. Teachers do not engage in or tolerate critical thinking. Any old place can slap a university sign on the door and become an accredited institution to qualify for govt. subsidy. JNU? IIT? forget it, they cannot even match Tehran University in a country cut off from the world for 25 years.
Hoodbhoy has some excellent suggestions. Requiring all graduate applicants to take the GRE; instituting tenure review and administrative review; re-starting student unions on campus; invigorating cultural and social discourse and, most intriguingly, attracting Indian teachers.
There is one bright spot in Pakistani HigherEd. Lahore University of Management Sciences [LUMS] has attracted foreign capital, foreign teachers and a higher caliber of students by adhering to international standards. It should act as a model just as Hoodbhoy's op-ed should act as a declaration for reforms.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, who currently teaches Physics at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad - the flagship university of Pakistan has just written the clearest denouncement of Pakistan's higher education in the highest circulation English daily in Pakistan, Dawn. I cannot urge you more strongly to click here and here and read.
His message is clear. Pakistan has no framework of higher education that can match up to the rest of the world. The universities are a quagmire of despotic clerks and professors. The PhDs cannot function in the real world. There is no standard of research in the country in hard sciences or social sciences. There are more mosques on campuses than bookstores. Knowledge is passed by rote and memorization in an endless loop from teacher to student to teacher. Teachers do not engage in or tolerate critical thinking. Any old place can slap a university sign on the door and become an accredited institution to qualify for govt. subsidy. JNU? IIT? forget it, they cannot even match Tehran University in a country cut off from the world for 25 years.
Hoodbhoy has some excellent suggestions. Requiring all graduate applicants to take the GRE; instituting tenure review and administrative review; re-starting student unions on campus; invigorating cultural and social discourse and, most intriguingly, attracting Indian teachers.
There is one bright spot in Pakistani HigherEd. Lahore University of Management Sciences [LUMS] has attracted foreign capital, foreign teachers and a higher caliber of students by adhering to international standards. It should act as a model just as Hoodbhoy's op-ed should act as a declaration for reforms.
On September 23, 2004, Congress passed HR 4818 which mandates the State Dept. to submit a report within 90 days on:
(1) describing the strategy of the Government of Pakistan to implement education reform in Pakistan, and the strategy of the Government of the United States to assist Pakistan to achieve that objective; (2) providing information on the amount of funding— (A) obligated and expended by the Government of Pakistan and the Government of the United States, respectively, for education reform in Pakistan, since January 1, 2002Let's see what comes out there.