The issue of the declining standards in higher education and the low quality of our university graduates to meet employer’s needs has once again been brought to the forefront in the Express Tribune (October 12, 2016) news item “Declining CSS results leave top recruiter scratching its head.”
Further, “the appalling results of this year’s competitive exam for civil services has been shocking for both the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC), which is the top recruiter, and students.” This year of the 9,643 candidates who took the written test of the Civil Superior Services (CSS) examination, only two percent qualified in the written test, and even fewer for the interview, the lowest percentage of successful students since 2011. The FPSC has initiated a review process of its own assessment scheme as well as approached the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to identify factors that are responsible for this failure.
A number of issues have been identified by both national and international educationists, researchers and evaluation studies. These include: unsuccessful education policies, focus on PhDs abroad and insufficient attention to professional development of faculty; narrow and outdated curricula as well as memorisation of textbooks; and difficulties in both reading comprehension and writing skills in English. The HEC has given a great boost to public sector universities in terms of human resource development, and physical and technical resources as well as funding. Efforts are being made to develop monitoring and evaluation schemes of higher education institutions, courses, faculty, and students learning outcomes, to enhance the quality of graduates they produce.
What then is ailing the state of higher education in Pakistan? And how can we cure this malady? Although I am not dismissing the efforts and recommendations of academic bodies in the past or present made with good intentions, I firmly believe that the most destructive factor in public sector universities is corruption and nepotism, as well as rampant negative politics by inefficient and power seeking faculty and staff. It is this evil element that leads to loss of good leadership, high merit teaching faculty and researchers, as well as successive failures of students.
How can any qualitative improvement take place when some highly placed politicians, bureaucrats and legislators put pressure on university leaders to ignore merit in case of admissions of students and hiring of faculty and staff as well as their promotions? In this rather sensitive situation, many of the weak and unethical heads of higher education give in due to lack of moral courage to resist, or being power hungry want favors in return, such as a second or third term in office. The first victim of nepotism in the education process is the university leadership.
The next victim is the highly motivated and qualified faculty that find no incentives in working hard, as their annual reports are many times written by senior professors with 16 years of education many of whom feel threatened by younger PhD faculty that are highly competent in both teaching and research. These hardened professors and senior faculty display severe resistance to change especially near retirement, and engage in all kinds of cunning strategies to oust them out, or make them resign, so as to pass on the mantle to their favoured colleagues.
The next victim is the lack of holistic development of university students who suffer as a result of mismanagement, incompetent faculty who either do not take classes, or are disinterested in the student benefitting from updated courses, learner centred approaches, and in preparing them for demands of the employment sector.
The final victim to suffer losses is the state itself. No matter how many education policies are made, this bitter harvest of jobless graduates would not only be a complete waste of public funds but would also lead to a growth of our young population that is bitter and frustrated, and which in turn would lead to further restlessness and crime. It is therefore extremely important for the state to purge the public sector universities of this menace of nepotism and corruption, and to make our graduates successful in all spheres of their personal and professional lives, as well as contribute to community and socio-economic development of Pakistan.
The writer is the former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore College Women University, and is a Woodrow Wilson Scholar