Myth: Bigger Infrastructure Means Better Education:
We were told that only high-quality universities should be allowed to come up. Primary criteria for high quality were the size of the campus, covered area and other brick and mortar facilities. HEC, SHEC, PHEC, CIEC and their institutional proformas are replete with questions about the size of the campus, and size of the offices for Deans, Faculty, and other officials. They ask about playgrounds, auditoriums, hostels etc. The conventional wisdom started suggesting that private sector universities starting in rented bungalows somehow will not be able to provide quality education. This argument was sold in spite of knowing about the history of many of our big universities now.
We all know how Aligarh University came up as MAO College in 1875. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan collected donations through the dancing girls which was much criticized at that time. Later in 1920s, the college became Aligarh Muslim University and eventually led to the establishment of Pakistan.
We are told how Karachi University started its operations after the partition from the house of its first VC. A "taat" rag (from a sack) was used as a divider to separate the household from the office of the university. The university started with departments having no more than a couple of teachers.
More recently LUMS started in 1980s in a couple of rented bungalows and now boasts one of the more impressive campuses in the private sector spanning over hundred acres. There are so many examples in the private sector going through such transformations who had started their existence from humble beginnings.
FAST NU, UMT, MAJU, CUST and so many other universities all started from rented bungalows.
A university is determined not by its buildings and infrastructure but by the commitment of its teachers and efficient and equitable processes.
This myth equates better quality with a ranking criterion that is biased toward the funding priorities of the donor commission. Actually, the donor agencies would like to feel good about the funding that they are making and would like to justify their existence. There is a conflict of interest somewhere in such rankings.
They are purported to be quality rankings, but are actually "quantity" rankings because they are just counting the following:
– Bigger buildings (brick and mortar)
– More equipment
– More budget
– More faculty
– More numbers
The myth is perpetuated by measuring the input and not the output. Because the figures of the output are quite disturbing.
Hence, we see that neither the output nor the process being emphasized by the HEC Criteria for ranking. We would not find any of the following elements in the published ranking criteria:
– Processes
– Systems
– Culture
– Quality of graduates
For example, we still see many big universities inserting news items in the newspapers that they have announced the results! The fact that it becomes news that the university has announced its results indicates that their processes are still in their infancy. For them announcing admissions is also news. Admissions and results announcements are not news, they are part of a process that should be automatic, predictable, and scheduled events.
Our policy makers in Islamabad scramble for a foreign yatra whenever they get funds. Coming back from such trips they bring presents like GATT, WTO, Washington Accord or QS rankings to justify these visits. There may be some good ideas in there but the whole package should have been processed and thoroughly internalized through courage, time, effort and research to develop our own nationally relevant versions of such criteria. We talk about ISI research publications but follow no such methodology in implementing such imported ideas. None of these systems before their promotion, implementation and adoption are passed through an impact factor ISI research that establishes their relevance to our context. We do not conduct any pilot studies or studies of the reliability and validity of the standards and criteria. We have seen how through WTO we were forced to let go of all the subsidies to our local market but when the time came for European nations and USA to let go of their subsidies, they dragged their feet and never did away with their own local subsidies. The result was that our whole economy got rocked in the process. However, when eventually those countries realized that they may have to do away with the nationally relevant subsidies they actually stifled the whole initiative and moved towards bilateral and multilateral agreements, jumping out of the WTO bandwagon that was designed to stifle the economies of the blind followers of the third world countries.
I suspect there is a clique of our intelligentsia in Islamabad that sits down, brainstorm and come up with a copy of some international system that will involve lots of money being spent, contracts being given, hardware being acquired and boxes being bought with only a cursory mention of the output generated through these investments.
________________________
This write-up is an extended rehash of the ideas presented in a talk on "Five Major Myths of Higher Education" made at the CIO Conference, March 2009 at Sheraton, Karachi. See another link.
This is the 4th of the Five Major Myths of Higher Education in Pakistan:
We are told how Karachi University started its operations after the partition from the house of its first VC. A "taat" rag (from a sack) was used as a divider to separate the household from the office of the university. The university started with departments having no more than a couple of teachers.
More recently LUMS started in 1980s in a couple of rented bungalows and now boasts one of the more impressive campuses in the private sector spanning over hundred acres. There are so many examples in the private sector going through such transformations who had started their existence from humble beginnings.
FAST NU, UMT, MAJU, CUST and so many other universities all started from rented bungalows.
A university is determined not by its buildings and infrastructure but by the commitment of its teachers and efficient and equitable processes.
This myth equates better quality with a ranking criterion that is biased toward the funding priorities of the donor commission. Actually, the donor agencies would like to feel good about the funding that they are making and would like to justify their existence. There is a conflict of interest somewhere in such rankings.
They are purported to be quality rankings, but are actually "quantity" rankings because they are just counting the following:
– Bigger buildings (brick and mortar)
– More equipment
– More budget
– More faculty
– More numbers
The myth is perpetuated by measuring the input and not the output. Because the figures of the output are quite disturbing.
Hence, we see that neither the output nor the process being emphasized by the HEC Criteria for ranking. We would not find any of the following elements in the published ranking criteria:
– Processes
– Systems
– Culture
– Quality of graduates
For example, we still see many big universities inserting news items in the newspapers that they have announced the results! The fact that it becomes news that the university has announced its results indicates that their processes are still in their infancy. For them announcing admissions is also news. Admissions and results announcements are not news, they are part of a process that should be automatic, predictable, and scheduled events.
I suspect there is a clique of our intelligentsia in Islamabad that sits down, brainstorm and come up with a copy of some international system that will involve lots of money being spent, contracts being given, hardware being acquired and boxes being bought with only a cursory mention of the output generated through these investments.
________________________
This write-up is an extended rehash of the ideas presented in a talk on "Five Major Myths of Higher Education" made at the CIO Conference, March 2009 at Sheraton, Karachi. See another link.
This is the 4th of the Five Major Myths of Higher Education in Pakistan:
- Our backwardness is because of science and technology
- There is mushrooming of educational institutions in Pakistan
- Public universities cost lower than private universities
- Bigger infrastructure (land, building, equipment) means better education
- Impact Factor research measures real impact
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