HEC chairman calls for steps to promote quality education

PESHAWAR: Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairman Dr Tariq Javed Banori on Wednesday called for steps to promote quality education and enhance the value of degrees issued by the universities.

“I have set five goals as chairman HEC. These include protecting/upholding the rights of students, ensuring autonomy of universities, giving academic freedom to teachers, and overcoming corruption,” he told a seminar titled “Higher Education in Pakistan: Past, Present and Future”. The Peshawar University Teachers Association (PUTA) had organized the seminar at the University of Peshawar.

PUTA President Dr Jamil Ahmad Chitrali also spoke on the occasion. Faculty members and students of the university attended the seminar.

Former vice-chancellor Dr Qasim Jan, former vice-chancellor Fata University Dr Tahir Shah, Pakistan Study Centre Director Dr Fakhrul Islam, Dr Fazle Nasir, PUTA General Secretary Dr Mohammad Iqbal and others were also in attendance.

The vice-chancellors of 31 public sector universities in the province, including University of Peshawar Vice-Chancellor Dr Mohammad Idrees had been invited to the event. However, none of them turned up to attend owing to alleged pressure from the government.

It looked extremely absurd that chairman HEC, who is a learned person and a Nobel Laureate, was delivering a lecture in one building of the university and vice-chancellor of the same institution was inking a memorandum of understanding with a lower-rank police officer in an adjacent building.

Some reports suggested that the vice-chancellor had strictly directed the deans and heads of departments to stop their faculty members and students from attending the event. At the onset of his thought-provoking lecture, the chairman HEC pointed his finger to the situation.

He said: “I know you were under tremendous pressure when you invited me to the event. But you were brave enough to resist the pressure.” He said the struggle between powerful and the powerless has been going on since long. “Those having power see and settle issues in their way. They hold secret meetings to resolve things. They make phone calls and intimidate people to get things done. The powerless bring the issue to the public and this way they force the powerful to accept their viewpoint,” he said.

“This is exactly the same situation I can see right now. I know why the vice-chancellors have not come to this event. I understand their feelings. I know they are under pressure,” he said. He said he was removed from office through two separate ordinances. He was out of the office for 11 months. But when was reinstated, he received messages from 2000 people on one single day assuring him of their support, which was the success, he said.

The policies adopted by the HEC after its inception in 2002 were responsible for producing the worst results. After taking charge as chairman, he started looking into the problems. The main problem was the issuance of an excessive number of degrees without taking care of quality, which is why Pakistani degrees lost their value at international level. Today if there is some value of degree obtained from Pakistani universities are those of engineering and medical degrees, which are free from HEC influence.

Some other institutions like Aga Khan University, LUMS, GIK and NUST which are out of the HEC domain are also having value of their degrees, he remarked. “If one wants to destroy a country, he will destroy the education sector. This could be done through devaluing their degrees. It is true that a degree is a piece of paper, but it has a treasure of knowledge behind it. When knowledge is not there behind a degree, it would be nothing more than just a piece of paper,” he said.

The major degree is that of the PhD. It was declared in 2002 that the university which produced more PhDs would get more share in grants and the teachers supervising PhDs would get more allowances. Thus the issue of plagiarism came to the fore as those unable to write a single sentence started getting PhD degrees. They lacked even the basic skills of reading, evaluation and writing, he said.

More attention was focused on quantity and quality was forgotten. There are universities which offer PhD degrees and they don’t have professors in relevant fields. PhD education is different from other education programmes. In undergraduate programmes, the things that are known are taught to students but in PhD education and research is made about things that are not known. Questions are given to which answers are to be found.

Research is another problem. Quality is not taken care of. Only the number of papers and journals are counted. Fake citation and impact factors are acquired. About research, he said it is not a mysterious thing. Think about the topics and issues regarding which the final word is not available. “Researchers try to find answers to questions that don’t have answers,” he said. “True researchers make contributions to knowledge,” he added.

He spoke in detail about the five goals. The first goal was to protect and uphold the rights of the students. It is the right of the students that they should be given access to quality education. The second goal was to ensure the autonomy of universities. The status of the vice-chancellor has been degraded. A vice-chancellor keeps waiting before the office of a section officer. The vice-chancellors approach the office of the chairman HEC for mere funds.

The appointments of vice-chancellors are not made timely and in a transparent manner. The statutory bodies of universities such as the Senate and Syndicate should be strengthened. All the departments concerned have representation in these bodies. If the representatives do not do their job well, action should be taken against them. These bodies have the authority to hold the vice-chancellor accountable.

Even the appointment of the vice-chancellor should be made by the Syndicate of the universities and approved by the Senate. The government should stay out of the process. Proper rules should be made for the purpose. Misuse of funds should be stopped and hiring of support staff should be limited, he said. “Autonomy of the universities is fundamental and the faculty and students are the guardians of the autonomy,” he said. The third goal was academic freedom. Teachers should speak the truth. But teachers are not free. My job was to clean up the system. There should be a transparent system and the teachers and students should be free to say whatever they want to say.

The fourth goal was that of accountability. All the public and private universities, according to him, are the public institutions and they are accountable to the society. “We have 30 centres of excellence and research centres to which a Rs3 billion budget is allocated each year. One third of the budget - Rs1 billion - is given to just one centre out of the 30 and one is not allowed to mention the name of the centre.

The accountability of universities is another issue. “We demand data from them and they don’t give it to us,” he said. The system of accountability should be made transparent and simplified. The most corruption is committed in the development projects. Initially the entire budget would be spent on development projects. The existing universities needed to be strengthened. If funds are spared, they should be spent on new projects. The universities need to provide service to the society. Through research they can solve social problems. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has great resources like mountains, forests and waters and problems such as pollution, crime and terrorism.

Research is not conducted by writing a few papers. It is a long process, which takes years. About the future, he said, the teachers and the students should determine the future of higher education and not the government and the HEC. The teachers honestly do their duties to put the students on the right track, he said.