Print Story
X
Unless the provinces get their due share in the NFC and the CCI proceeds to empower the provincial HECs, the cold war between the federal and provincial governments is likely to stay
In the first week of November, two interesting news items about higher education (HE) attracted attention. One was about Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal’s pronouncements on HEV 2025 (Higher Education Vision 2025) in Islamabad. The other was from Sindh CIEC (Charter Inspection and Evaluation Committee) that has been asked by the Sindh chief minister to revive itself and start monitoring private universities in Sindh.
While Ahsan Iqbal conveniently avoided any mention of provincial HECs, the Sindh CM did not bother to touch upon the responsibilities of the federal HEC in monitoring private or public-sector universities in Sindh.
After the 18th Amendment to the constitution, there has been a cold war between the federal and provincial governments over the extent of authority each enjoys regarding higher education. Due to a lack of any devolution mechanism, the power struggle in higher education has been intensifying as both the federal and provincial authorities try to assert their supremacy over various issues concerning universities. The Council of Common Interests (CCI) has not been proactive in deciding the matters related to higher education and while some stakeholders want to take the issue to the apex court, others prefer to follow a wait-and-see approach.
After the 18th Amendment was passed, a three-member bench, headed by the then chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, nullified the federal government’s notification regarding HEC’s devolution. The then attorney-general of Pakistan, Maulvi Anwarul Haq, had assured the then supreme court that fresh legislation would be made after taking all stakeholders on board. As Justice Chaudhry was fond of interfering in the matters related to the executive and legislative branches, he made no secret of his desire to maintain the federal HEC intact. The personalities who were very vocal in their support to the federal HEC included as diverse persons as Dr Attaur Rahman, former chairman of HEC, and Senator Azam Swati.
Opponents of provincial HECs affirm that the federal HEC’s status is covered under the HEC Ordinance 2002, therefore it cannot be devolved to provinces under the 18th Amendment unless some new legislation is done. In March 2015, the CII considered this matter based on a summary submitted by the government of Sindh but the only decision it could make was about setting up a committee comprising ministers of federal education, PDR (planning, development, and reform) and IPC (inter-provincial coordination) with the chairman of the HEC, chief ministers of all provinces, and secretary of finance.
The committee was supposed to consider the matters pertaining to HE in the post-18th Amendment Pakistan. Similar bodies were also envisaged at the provincial levels, but little progress has been made in that direction; thus, both students and teachers suffer at the provincial level. Take for example the case of Balochistan. Since the federal HEC is the only organisation with the authority to verify education degrees before students can apply somewhere, they remain dependent on the federal HEC. There is no fully functional HEC office in Balochistan, with only a sub-office that mostly operates as a postal agency.
If students of Balochistan need urgent verification of degrees, they need to travel all the way to Islamabad. The provincial secretary of IPC in Balochistan, Abdul Saboor Kakar, in a telephonic conversation with the TNS said that the matter of establishing a provincial HEC is pending because the CCI needs to decide in this regard. He says that unless the CCI reaches a conclusion about the roles of federal and provincial HECs, the establishment of Balochistan HEC would be premature. "May be in future we establish a BHEC to look after our universities, but now any such measure is uncalled for," he concluded.
In Punjab, the situation is different. After the 18th Amendment, the Punjab HEC was announced by the chief minister in February 2013 and included in the Medium-Term Development Framework (MTDF) 2014-17. A five-member steering committee of leading vice-chancellors prepared a future roadmap of higher education in Punjab and endorsed the establishment of a provincial HEC as an autonomous body. The PHEC ordinance was approved in October 2014 and PHEC Act 2014 was passed in January 2015. Dr Nizamuddin became the first chairman of the PHEC who made it functional and formulated its three-year strategic plan.
If you read the PHEC Act 2014, you realise that its first two functions are: coordination with the HEC and formulation of policies in line with national standards prepared by the HEC. It does not come into conflict with the HEC in any way and seeks to cooperate with and follow on the HEC standards. Per Murtaza Noor, analyst and expert of federalism, "After the 18th amendment the provincial governments would have to realise their roles to cater to growing needs of higher education in view of specified ground realities of their provinces." Similar views were expressed by Zafarullah Khan, director of Pakistan Institute of Parliamentary Services.
Both Noor and Khan are from Punjab but display a strong tendency towards devolution and decentralisation. In Sindh, the provincial government established its own HEC, and appointed former petroleum minister, a PPP senator and owner of a private university, Dr Asim Hussain, as the chairman of Sindh HEC with the status of a provincial minister.
Dr Attaur Rahman and the Pakistan Medical Association’s Karachi chapter have been at the forefront to criticise the establishment of the SHEC and maintain that it is a violation of the orders of the superior judiciary.
In their opinion, only the federation should have the prerogative of regulating higher education and the provinces should have no right to such a commission. On the contrary, Dr Atiqur Rahman, director SHEC, had bitter truths to tell the TNS about his experiences with the HEC in Islamabad. He considers himself one of the victims of the Islamabad bureaucracy that discriminates against the professionals, researchers, students, and teachers from smaller provinces. He says, "The HEC has failed to address the concerns of educational practitioners who want to contribute positively to the promotion of higher education in Pakistan but the federal HEC is mired by favouritism that results in the removal of officers from smaller provinces."
Dr Rafique Chandio from the economics department of Sindh University also favours a provincial HEC over the federal one, but the director of Sindh University’s Institute of English Language and literature, Dr Rafiq Memon, is all praise for the federal HEC. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Dr Jamil Chitrali, president of Peshawar University Teachers’ Association (PUTA) and director of Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, says that "the current KP provincial government has been delaying the formation of the KP HEC."
He recalls that in the last cabinet meeting of the previous provincial government under the ANP chief minister, Amir Haider Hoti, "a draft for the KP HEC was tabled but the bureaucracy persuaded the CM to leave it for the next government."
Since then it has been almost four years that no progress has been made toward the formation of the KP HEC. Now, things are dependent on the next NFC award. The NFC award decides the share of resources each province gets. The first consultative meeting of the Ninth NFC award was held in September, 2016. There is a need to expedite the process so that the implementation of the 18th Amendment is carried out in letter and spirit for all the provinces. Once the Ninth NFC award is agreed upon, the provinces will have more resources to spend on all matters provincial, including their HECs.
The federal government’s desire to keep a central authority on education is against the provisions of the 18th Amendment. Six years after the passing of the 18th Amendment, it is imperative that its provisions are not reversed under various pretexts. It is not only about devolution; it is also about the autonomy of universities and academic freedom at campuses. The 18th Amendment talks about a new commission on education standards at the federal level. After the abolition of concurrent list, education, inter alia, has become a provincial matter.
But it doesn’t mean that provincial governments should be meddling with the universities’ autonomy, it simply stipulates that the federal HEC should look after the standards, and provinces should handle all the resources. The Senate Chairman, Raza Rabbani, has also time and again called for amending the HEC Ordinance 2002 and to substitute it by ‘Commission for standards in higher education, research, scientific and technical institutions’ as per Entry number 12 of the federal legislative list-part II. In the recent NFC working groups consultative meetings, the four provinces have agreed on bringing the Ninth NFC Award without a fresh census.
They have demanded that the Award be constituted before December. Most provinces have also presented there working papers but the federal government has not been able to present its own working paper and that shows a lack of interest on the part of the federal government in this regards. A failure to finalise the Ninth NFC award is further complicating the issues in the higher education sector and the federal and provincial HECs are still ambiguous about their respective roles.
On the face of it, the federal government is reluctant to devolve education, especially higher education to the provinces, but at the same time no efforts have been made to dispel the impression that the HEC gives appropriate share of jobs to the federating units of Pakistan. Even if the provincial HECs are formed in all the provinces, the job share will still be applicable to the federal HEC. Just to give one example, right now out of over six hundred employees of the HEC hardly a dozen or so are from Balochistan, and less than one per cent of total PhD scholarships have been awarded to Baloch students.
HEC did not have a provincial quota from 2002 till 2011. During the past PPP government, a decision of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) in July 2011 enforced a six per cent share of jobs for Balochistan and that remains unfulfilled to date.
To conclude, we may reiterate three suggestions: an immediate agreement on the Ninth NFC award, an urgent action by the CCI to reform the HEC, and a proactive role of the provincial HECs. Unless the provinces get their due share in the NFC and the CCI proceeds to empower the provincial HECs, and the provinces themselves are ready to take up their responsibilities for their higher education, the situation is likely to remain the same.
