Daily Times

Four relatively important things happened during the last couple of weeks: I made it through another year, I had the first good mangoes of the season, a company called Axact bit the dust and the lawyers in the Punjab went berserk, and beat up policemen wherever they saw them. Much has been written about the last two events. The incident that led to the ongoing tussle between the lawyers and the police was the result of an unnecessary confrontation with an unfortunate result. As far as the Axact scandal is concerned, almost everybody that has ever ‘earned’ an academic degree has an opinion about the issues involved in that scandal.
From my perspective, the selling of false degrees is a tawdry affair that has gone on since the time having academic qualifications became useful. False degrees come in many forms. The degrees given out to star athletes in many US universities are about as meaningless as academic awards as can be. Almost in every academic institution there are stringers that complete the requirements but barely. A former chief minister of Balochistan said rather famously a couple of years ago that a degree is a degree, fake or not. Except as a prerequisite for certain jobs, having a degree rarely makes a difference. Frankly, I remember little if anything of the economics and political science that I read in Government College some 50 years ago or, for that matter, about the classification of ferns a year earlier. The only advantage of reading about ferns was that I did get into medical college.
Reading the press coverage about the Axact affair was, however, quite an educational experience of sorts. The New York Times (NYT) article that started the ball rolling was quite detailed and suggested that Axact was a company that, as its primary business, sold false academic credentials. Most people that wrote about this in the Pakistani press accepted this accusation against Axact but what really kept the story in the headlines for days was the association of a soon to be launched private television channel with Axact. Interestingly, the story in the NYT barely mentions the television channel. But it is the channel that has become the real story, at least for the Pakistani press, and the last few days have seen many highly paid television professionals associated with the channel leave in what seems like indecent haste. It would seem that most, if not all, of them knew where their mega salaries were coming from all along.
On reading what has been written by the Pakistani press it would seem that the owner of Axact was some sort of a Robin Hood figure. This in part might be due to the fact that Axact avoided selling false diplomas in Pakistan. One rather famous opinion writer even compared him to Icarus, almost admiring him for his audacity and blaming his success for his ultimate failure. However, if the accusations levelled against him stand, it would seem that Mr Shaikh was nothing more than a successful con man and, eventually, an ordinary thief. The other aspect of the Pakistani response to this issue is that every discussion either implies or presents some sort of a conspiracy theory to explain why Axact was brought down and the alacrity with which he and his business were investigated by the Pakistan government. Even though everybody accepts that selling false academic credentials is wrong, at least in the Pakistani context it does not seem too bad a thing to do.
In a country where the vast majority of people can barely read and write, the need to acquire an academic degree or diploma seems to be more of a preoccupation for the rich or the vain. Even if we ignore the utter disregard the present and all previous governments have had for the education of ordinary people, the sad fact is that the quality of education that is available in Pakistan is rather bad. Many institutions of ‘learning’, both in the private and the public sector, today are diploma mills at best. Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to chat with many young people who have earned bachelors and masters degrees through a ‘private exam’ (usually through a private college that prepares students for a university exam) and the best I can say about many of them is that their knowledge of the subjects that they studied is rather limited. My favourite has to be a person I know who has a privately earned master’s degree in economics but has never heard of John Maynard Keynes.
This does not mean that all our young people who graduate from our schools and colleges are ignorant and learn nothing during their studies. High achieving students who do well in the academic environment are often quite knowledgeable. But most of the knowledge such students acquire is self directed rather than provided through supervised study at their educational institutions. There are some schools, colleges and universities that do a decent job. However, these are quite rare especially if we exclude those institutions that essentially prepare their students for further study abroad. My purpose today is not to indulge in a prolonged harangue about the dismal state of education in Pakistan but I do believe that the Axact scandal is also an opportunity.
Perhaps all those high powered investigative journalists that lived rather well for the last couple of years on the ill-gotten gains of a company selling fake educational diplomas will now take it upon themselves to investigate the scandalous state of education in Pakistan. Ghost schools, missing teachers, antiquated syllabi, corrupt examiners and examination systems, and the mushrooming of private schools and colleges that offer shoddy as well as shady education are all worth a close examination. Perhaps even the government officials investigating this scandal will in time turn their attention to the scandalous state of education in Pakistan.

The author is a former editor of the Journal of Association of Pakistani descent Physicians
of North America (APPNA)