Daily Times

The performance of Pakistan’s higher education sector over the past 15 years is mostly debated with reference to numbers. Statistics related to new universities opened up, PhDs produced, and students graduating from universities are frequently mentioned. But there is hardly any discussion in the country on the quality of education imparted at our universities or research conducted by PhD scholars produced by these universities.

According to the Higher Education Commission (HEC), 205,409 students graduated in the education year 2012-13. The number rose to 220,225 in 2014-15. If graduates of distance learning programmes are added, the figure for 2012-13 rises to 211,831 and that of 2014-15 to 228,617. The number of university teachers with PhDs has rose from 8,015 in 2012-13 to 10,214 in 2014-15. The strength of fulltime faculty in Pakistani universities was 30,460 in 2012-13. It rose to 37,397 in 2014-15.

In the same period, the number of PhD scholars graduating from universities grew from 2,156 to 2,299. Interestingly, private universities produced more PhD graduates than public universities.

But there is no joy in big numbers if the quality is not up to the par.

Nearly half of the graduates that the universities produce remain unemployed. This may be a reflection of a poorly performing economy. But there is another angle: what percentage of these university graduates are able to connect with the global economy and create possibilities for themselves and others? The possibilities are now nearly-universally available courtesy the Internet of Things, and the human grit is not about complaining; it is about finding opportunities in challenges. Ask yourselves when was the last time you heard a youth talking about the economy and not about politics? According to a report titled “Academia-industry Linkages Gap Analysis” by Career Advisory and Assessment Services, Lahore, 76.6percent of employers in Pakistan ‘are not happy with the quality of graduates our universities are producing’. There indeed is a lot of food for thought here.+

Our universities are populated with youth who are devoid of critical thinking skills. I am a witness to dozens of incidents that show that university students are not exposed to any useful material other than their syllabus. A frightening majority picks up even the syllabus textbooks only near their exams. Then, they resort to tactics like learning the text by heart.

During a recent visit to a university in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, I was shocked to see an entire class of over 100 young men and women raising their hands in support of Mumtaz Qadri’s criminal act of killing then Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer. There wasn’t a single hand raised when I asked them if they had watched Taseer’s press conferences on Asia Bibi’s incarceration before his assassination. Similarly, no one had read Pakistan Penal Code sections 295-298. These students were just content with information they were getting through the media or from other people in their surroundings.

In another incident, a friend of mine had to face the wrath of his fellow students at a university in Punjab when he protested over the unfair admission of a student with no background in sports on a reserved seat. The students took out a procession against him and charged him with insulting religion as the person who was admitted on the sports quota was a hafizul Quran. Had it not been for the wise and strong registrar of the university, we may have had a yet another fallacious case of blasphemy against a bright and promising scholar. That friend of mine is in the process of finding suitable immigration options, while the hafiz sahib continues on in the university.

It is quite easy to float with the flow and brush the garbage under the carpet, but these tactics have not, and shall never, produce solutions. Pakistan has consistently failed its young generations, and now it is about time that we start producing graduates who can think critically. Without improving the quality of education, our state and society cannot have a promising future. Improvement in terms of numbers alone won’t matter much.

The writer is the executive director of the Centre for Social Education and Development, Islamabad