Daily Times

The COVID19 has severely exposed the significance given to the two vital public sectors in decades by our governments: Health and Education. The criminal negligence is taking its toll as billions are now being spent to upgrade the health sector, mostly related to managing COVID19 while other diseases are ignored. The government seems to have no option but to make huge cuts in funds for all sectors to deal with this health pandemic. This is leading to substantial decrease in financial grants to education sector in the coming fiscal year. So, we have not learnt from the past about setting our priorities straight. Obviously, making drastic cuts will be pleaded under the COVID19crises, and the present government will be repeating the same mistake of ignoring education and research. This will add to the financial limitations of both old and new universities affecting badly the quality of higher education and research. It is seems that we will witness an educational pandemic due to uncertainty of COVID period and lack of needed grants for the up-gradation of the infrastructure of universities, hiring of new competent faculty, development of the present faculty, up-grading research facilities and traditional academic environment. Following are only a few points to ponder upon and act:

The universities are ought to develop all kind of infrastructure and human resources to minimize the ongoing drastic impact of COVID19 on quality of education, research, and training. The HEC urges educational institutions to follow the regular academic calendar using online methods of instruction. The policy of universities to continue classes online without assessing faculty’s digital competencies and available infrastructure has added a further question mark in the quality of teaching. Neither students nor faculty is satisfied at large. Under this backdrop, the public sector universities must get even more funds to control the quality of education and research.

Fact of the matter is that the governments never provided the needed funds to the existing universities for meeting their requirements to compete for world rankings. Rather a new trend emerged during the last few years in politics is that the political leaders would demand a university in their constituency instead of a good college or strengthening a school. Consequently, many new universities got established by upgrading colleges or sub campuses of old universities in their constituency and the trend still seems to continue. Instead of establishing small new universities those units should have been developed as model post- graduate colleges, and the old renowned universities in all fields should have been targeted to support fully to enable them to compete for world rankings. That is what Malyasia has done and has attracted a large number of foreign students including Pakistan.

Then, the new budding universities should be taken care and facilitated in establishing their fundamental infrastructure. But, those are constantly struggling to resolve basic matters such as: approval of their service statutes even after years; availability of funds needed to recruit faculty and staff; development of infrastructure to meet HEC requirement and other quality standards. The rules of business are so laborious and tedious that a file must go to so many departments and desks that it gets lost somewhere. There is a dire need to shorten the hierarchical circle for trivial routine tasks.

Furthermore, to hamper autonomy of the relatively new universities, their Acts, approved by the previous Government of Punjab, include the minister of education as chair of a syndicate and three members of provincial assembly as member. As a result, the insight of the education minister and political members-which would vary depending on their academic qualification, party politics and priorities may significantly affect the functioning of these universities and their vice chancellors. Luckily, the present provincial minister is well educated, receptive and listens to vice-chancellors but this may not always be the case.

Therefore, the present Punjab Government must revise Acts of new universities to make the vice chancellors chair of syndicate like old universities. They should be given authority in decision making. A syndicate is there to keep an eye on the performance of the vice-chancellors, and they may be asked for further annul performance reports by the pro-chancellor (Minister) and Chancellor (Governor). The authority should be given to the vice-chancellors, of course with accountability.

Another issue is about generating funds by the universities. On the one hand public sector universities face all kinds of hurdles in making plans to increase the fee structure or engage in an alternative funding plan or devise some business strategies, and on the other, they are told that if private sector can earn from education why cannot public sector universities be self-sustained? The parents manage to pay heavy fees to private sector, if their child does not get admission in a good public sector university, but they would not to public sector. This dichotomy at all levels must be addressed.

It is humbly requested to the Prime Minister, Chief Ministers and Education Ministers to save the higher education sector from imminent suffering due to drastic curtailment of funds. Needless to mention that the pandemic outcomes of keeping education on the lowest priority may not be as immediate and tangible as are of physical diseases. Nevertheless, it can be said without an iota of doubt that it results in colossal damage to mind, soul, and progress of a nation. History is witness to that. The poor state of our economic, scientific, social, and cultural progress is very much caused by our mistreatment of education sector, from primary to higher, during all those seven decades after independence.

Our Prime Minister Sahib believes in providing high-quality education for all. Our common people prefer higher education from public sector universities because of their financial constraints. We admire PM sahib for increase in needy scholarships to poor students. However, the universities need appropriate funds to provide them conducive academic and scholarly environment. Education sector is not asking for much against the volume of total budget of the country. There must be other sectors that can be compromised for this year, but surely not the higher education and scholarly endeavors. It is highly expected that the present government will treat higher education differently and will help the public sector academic institutions in their development. It will also facilitate government’s promise of providing equal opportunities of quality education to the economically challenged people and bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.

Without a question, these are equally demanding times for education sector for introducing innovative work culture, policies and reforms along with sufficient financial support to control the educational pandemic which is already on rise due to our past policies coupled with the outcomes of COVID19 outbreak.

The writers is VC, University of Home Economics Lahore