Education Reformer Cookbook

Last week, we heard that the prime minister intends to spend the GBP190 million received from the UK’s National Crime Agency on the establishment of the Daanish University of Emerging Sciences. As the name hints, the idea is inspired by the residential Daanish schools established in pairs (one for boys, one for girls) in various districts of Punjab for academically gifted children hailing from underprivileged families.

The goal of both, Daanish schools and the envisioned Daanish university, is to give children and young adults the opportunity for a good education, much better than what the public sector otherwise provides, is worth striving for. However, establishing yet another institution, as premier and state-of-the-art as it may be, to add to the list of existing ones that are languishing from public neglect is an admission that (most, not all) existing institutions are not adding the value expected from them.

If they did and if the purpose is to give opportunities to talented students, those students could be helped more immediately by removing the key barrier standing in their way: the cost of education at the few existing institutions, both public and private, that are delivering on their mission.

Reports suggest that the entire GBP190 million is to be spent on this single project. However, some voices in the education bureaucracy have been saying that, while it will be spent on the (higher) education sector, not all of it will be spent on one new university. After all, by today’s exchange rate, this amount comes to more than Rs68 billion.

To put that in perspective, that is roughly equal to the federal government’s higher education budget in FY2024-25 to support all public universities the federal government is responsible for, and partial support for universities in provinces across the country, 165 by last count. This is yet another instance where, instead of addressing a wide-scale problem, the problem is ignored, left unaddressed, and a new institution is built at an exorbitant cost.

What ails higher education, and education in general, of this country is not a shortage of one more university established at record expense; it is systematic problems on many levels. With more than 32 universities, the twin cities are probably served by more universities per capita than any other part of the country. Adding another one, even an excellent one, will do nothing to address the issues faced by the entire (public) higher education sector. If the intention is indeed to do some good, fix the public universities we already have. There are large public universities in the capital today whose registrar offices are so underdeveloped

that they maintain the electronic records of all current students in a single spreadsheet.

This government has been making a show lately of focusing on education but without any alignment in approach. According to the prime minister, the new Daanish University will be staffed by foreign-qualified faculty. Is the honourable PM aware that universities across the country have been haemorrhaging foreign-qualified faculty members trained at taxpayer expense for almost a decade because universities are unable to retain them? Is he aware that a key source of dissatisfaction among faculty in most public universities is the caste system of multiple service tracks among people working the same job? I venture that the reports he receives from the education bureaucracy (the MoFEPT and the HEC) are that all is well.

A few days ago, the Minister of Planning announced his endeavour to not only unify faculty benefits within public universities but simultaneously bridge the pay gap between public and private universities (?). When I read this news, I felt like all universities are being treated like Utility Stores or branches of a bank — one as good as another with nothing to distinguish them. Meanwhile, the PM is announcing special pay scales for the faculty of his new project.

The new Daanish University, public though it may be, is also promised to be kept free of political interference. I am unsure how that can ever be the case in a university that is funded by taxpayers and overseen by bureaucracy. How will that be ensured when the ruling party changes?

More importantly, has anyone informed the CM of Punjab of this policy, a province where the direction of travel is just the opposite and the CM has inserted herself in the process of appointing university vice-chancellors and, going forward, as being proposed by the Higher Education Department in Punjab, direct governance through chairperson-ship of syndicates? If it is possible and good to shield one public university from outside political interference, should that not be the policy for all universities? All these contradictory announcements make me wonder whether people within the PML-N are even talking to each other.

I would love to see a government being serious about taking up the cause of higher education and tackling, not all, but just one of the hard problems the sector is facing. Sure, some of those problems require money, but a good many are systematic and require a change of the laws.

The immediate challenge facing almost all public universities is that they have been gradually defunded over the last eight years: while inflation took a bite out of the purchasing power of their budgets, they were simultaneously pressured to refrain from raising tuition fees to make up for shortfalls. Today, many are months behind in meeting their employees’ payroll and retirees’ pension obligations. Some have resorted to accounting tricks driving some former employees to issue public ultimatums of committing suicide.

There is a big public university a few minutes’ drive from the PM House that has all these problems. Consider fixing that before setting up a new white elephant at an exorbitant cost.

Dropping an exceptionally well-funded university into a sea of mediocrity and poverty is not going to change the environment in which it will operate. The opposite is more likely. It will only survive for as long as generous public support continues, like the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) of Saudi Arabia which is included in a list of universities against which Daanish University will be benchmarked, according to an official presentation. What will be the fate of that outsized public support for a university named for the PM’s signature pet project when a different party comes to power? Will that be the end of Daanish University?

Suppose the government is feeling charitable and insists on spending GBP190 million on the education sector. In that case, it can require universities in its purview to start moving towards greater financial autonomy, set up professionally managed and publicly audited endowment funds, maybe even provide seed money for them, and free universities from some of the constraints that prevent them from using (not selling off) their resources.

If the government wishes to do something for the higher education sector without spending any money, there is plenty to choose from. For a start, the government could step back from its mantra of demanding all higher education institutions to conduct research, and roll back the problematic metrics for research output that were set up by the HEC almost two decades ago and all of academia has been chasing since.

Maybe it was OK to start the way we did in the 2000s, focusing on quantity rather than quality to develop initial momentum. However, as you go along and discover weaknesses, it is necessary to evolve, make changes, and, when an approach backfires completely, backtrack. But what we have in higher education today is people who set the system up taking attempts at reform as personal attacks, enough to make them come out of retirement and pull every lever at their disposal to maintain the current status quo.

The government may also demonstrate some clear-eyedness and honesty and admit that not every university is capable of running doctoral programmes and conducting research. Categorise a subset of public universities as research universities, focus public support for research in those institutions and leave the others to focus on delivering great undergraduate and postgraduate programs, and hold their leadership accountable for their delivery on meeting objectives of employment rates, starting salaries of graduates, and other outputs.

It may also realise that the most immediate challenge to universities is putting them on a path to greater financial sustainability. Requiring a PhD as a condition for candidates for a VC post where the greatest challenge may be a business problem is shrinking the pool of eligible applicants. Similarly, until syndicates and senates have a diversity of viewpoints and remain stuffed with bureaucrats and politicians as many are right now, universities will never act autonomously and make the decisions that suit their situations.

Based on public statements and other official information about Daanish University, I wish I could tell you this project will bring noticeable improvements to public higher education, at least the part the federal government is responsible for. Unfortunately, I cannot. The more I see, the more this looks like a very expensive ribbon-cutting opportunity to put one’s name on a plaque, at the cost of continued neglect of all other universities.

The writer (she/her) has a PhD in Education.