Daily Times

Why is everyone criticising the government? Or the Higher Education Commission? Why is everyone blaming the system?

If someone holding a PhD degree cannot get a job, it does not mean that the HEC is responsible.

The HEC may be partly responsible.

The government, too, may have its part.

But overlooking the student part is a serious problem.

A close look at the education system in Pakistan tells everything. There is nothing like uniformity, least needed.

With a separated schooling system, encompassing mainly government schools, private schools for the middle-class – and systems with everything imported except for what can’t be – there is not much to achieve.

Worst, of course, comes at the college level where private colleges dominate. They are all the same, with the same faces and same methods. Professors who don’t need to look at questions from the book before simply writing down their solutions are considered the best in the town. Cramming (or, for decency’s sake, repetition) has made them perfect.

It would do the same to their students, who are least concerned with ‘learning.’

The above part was to take a start. It offers nothing. Nor does it attract the solicited and unsolicited education-activism we have. University is the place that everyone appears concerned about.

Fairly sharing blame would save the HEC. Dozens of op-eds have been published to often, albeit rightly, decimate the institution. It takes even a university professor weeks to decipher the distribution of resources and the division of research and travel grants.

Results are not-so-encouraging: saturation and dearth will be evident and parallel in any two departments of a university.

Some departments can’t offer jobs to PhDs (in some cases, not even research associates),others hire dozens of adjunct faculty members only to keep their programmes on course. Criteria for publications and promotions are so problematic and ambiguous that universities with hundreds of BPS and TTS faculty members have no idea about the promotion and job security of their staff. The outcome of generous [foreign] PhD scholarships is not reassuring, either. Yet, to consider the damage, we need to look at private universities and the junk they produce with their come-get-pay strategy.

Governments, military or non-military, are responsible because all this has occurred under their watch. It makes sense, given Pakistan’s history and the leadership’s objectives, that education is not a priority.

But disciplining and regulating are not that difficult – for some reasons, successive governments found them impossible. No solution, be it short-term or long-term, would work perfectly. Except for giving unemployment allowances or opening new universities to accommodate the unemployed graduates (only when new admissions are banned), there is not much the government can do.

Pakistan is not a welfare state. And the government is not here to guarantee jobs. It claims so for electioneering.

It makes sense, given Pakistan’s history and the leadership’s objectives, that education is not a priority

Ideally, it’s the private sector that provides space to talented, educated individuals. All chemistry PhDs can’t become university professors, some surely can. The rest can look towards the industry. Or, ideally, in an agricultural state like Pakistan, individuals specializing in environmental sciences (offered in Pakistani universities), agriculture, relevant micro aspects of biology and chemistry, etc can start consultancies to advise farmers, improve seeds, advance pesticides, etc. But that’s ‘ideally’.

The problem, however, runs deep. And it has a lot to do with the students, for they are part of the problem. Anachronistic teaching and research methods aside, copy-paste culture, cheating, and unfair means are the hallmarks of our students. In research, they depend more on ‘rephrasing’ than ‘reading.’ It is possible that a graduate thesis on ‘the US war on terror’, first submitted in 2002, has been rephrased by two dozen students without referencing and acknowledgement. In natural sciences, minor manipulation in only one aspect (of an already completed work) can earn you a research paper or a dissertation. No wonder the research conducted by Pakistani students, as well as professors, mostly involves recycling of the data and they are therefore not given space in the leading journals.

In classrooms, unfair means are favourite tools. Smart use of mobile phones, tabs, and micro-size photocopies can earn you better grades. Submitted assignments, at least that I have received over the years, can be up to 90 per cent plagiarized. Yet there is rarely an appropriate punishment (that addresses cheating and unfair means). Even if there are rules, it is difficult to implement them, for the beginner is destined to invite the trouble.

Last, but probably the most important, part underlines our collective failure in rectifying the redundant, inept system we were provided with. Left to the mercy of the HEC and the government, we, the academics and university leadership, hardly try to bring about any change. We continue worrying about the material aspect of the problem, but the moral aspect remains virtually neglected. We have, as a society, failed to teach the younger generations the virtue of being morally upright. Hence, for them, corruption is something that only Asif Zardari, Imran Khan, and Nawaz Sharif do – what they do in the classrooms or exams is not. Outcomes: nothing changes but only faces and the details of suffering.

As for the students, from the beginning of their education careers, parents seldom encourage them to play fair in competitions regardless of the cost. Students rarely come to their alma maters to learn. They come to be transformed into doctors, engineers, bureaucrats, etc. Their parents want this, too. No wonder these poor souls can’t be rid of this utility-based mindset even at the university level.

The writer is a PhD candidate at Area Study Centre, Quaid-i-Azam University