High School or University

High School or Universityby Dr Tariq Rahman

posted December 15, 2002

All ruling elites want subservient universities. Here are, after all, thousands of young people who can really make it difficult for any elite to survive if they do come on the streets. After all, the movement against America's war in Vietnam began on the university campuses. At home, we have seen how the revolt against Ayub Khan began on the campuses. And of course, the Teheran University became the centre of resistance against the Shah of Iran.

Moreover, it is not only the students who create trouble. Academics too are active in speaking out against their government's policies. A well-known example is that of Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, who has the same position in theoretical linguistics as Einstein once had in theoretical physics. Like Einstein, again, Chomsky too speaks up on issues of war and peace, justice and injustice and so on. This makes Chomsky take anti-American positions and, indeed, his diatribes against the US and against Israel's policies in the Middle East are well known.

What the state would like is not to have people like Chomsky on the campus as much as they would not like to have student leaders who can bring out processions. What the corporate sector would like is to have technically competent university-trained personnel who can mend machines, generate wealth, write reports, mind phones and, generally, provide the services they need to make more and yet more wealth. The state too would like to have skilled personnel - though less competence will do if one knows his or her place in the power setup - to maintain its power-project. Above all the state wants a good war machine, a good law and order machine, an efficient revenue-generating-apparatus and some spin-doctors who will give it a good image abroad. In short, what the state and the corporate sector want is a good high school and not a university. That is to say, if the university is defined as a creator of new ideas, a space for intellectuals who may or may not be dissidents, a place where one is free to pursue the truth without fear or favour and a place where the most learned people in a country and the keenest minds can come together to expose each other and students to all kinds of thoughts.

As the universities were created by the Church in the medieval age, the state could only co-opt it. It was not possible to order it about too openly. Later, as the state became powerful it found ways of increasing its influence on the university. In South Asia, of course, the state created the university. Thus it had undisputed power over it to begin with. What is now happening is that both the state and the private sector are creating the kind of university they want, i.e. the good High School. The armed forces already had such places which were called colleges or academies. In them the technical side, such as the teaching of engineering, was at par with that at the civilian, public-sector universities. However, dissent was not tolerated either among students or among the faculty. While teaching was emphasized, research was neglected. Regimentation, instead of openness, was the order of the day. While students were barred from taking out processions, academics - who were called teachers or instructors and not academics - were not free to give their opinions on policy matters. In short, these were stifling places for genuine intellectuals. Einstein and Chomsky were definitely out.

Now, the corporate sector has extended the concept of the high school (and the disciplined armed forces institutions) to all institutions of higher education. This has been done in many subtle ways. First, by appointment of non-academic chief executives. This used to happen in South Asian public universities earlier too, but now the frequency is higher. This gives the message that academics are not elevated enough to occupy the highest symbolic offices in our universities; such offices can go to non-academics. At the symbolic level this reduces the prestige of academics. Secondly, by giving governance roles in universities to non-academics. This too used to happen earlier in South Asia with syndicates having more government appointees, and non-academic ones at that, than academics. However, this is being extended to bring in people from chambers of commerce and industry, business concerns, NGOs and other institutions. Private universities too have more non-academics than academics on their governing bodies. This definitely confirms and extends the domination of non-academics over the universities. This serves to prevent academics from becoming powerful and prestigious. And, so impressed is the public by administrative power, that it listens more to people possessing it than those with the most prestigious publications and doctorates from the best universities in the world.

What makes things really bad is that the university is fast becoming a very hierarchical institution. I remember how, despite the vice chancellors being appointed by the state, the university's culture was not very rigidly hierarchical. There used to be much debate, often heated, in the senate. The deans were elected and sometimes a really critical, refreshingly bold, dean made it to the syndicate. The departmental heads, or chairpersons, were rotated every three years or so. Thus no chairperson assumed he or she was a boss, as the head actually is in the bureaucracy and the military. Very often juniors, if they were associate professors, could be heads while their seniors, even full professors, were on the faculty of the department. Sometimes some people refused to be administrative heads since it took away time from their research or they did not want to settle the numerous disputes which always demand much expenditure of time and energy. I, for one, got myself removed in less than six months from my appointment as the chairman of the Department of ELT (English language teaching) and Linguistics at AJK University in 1987 choosing to serve under a head who was an associate professor while I was a full professor. In some Western universities the best and most creative scholars refuse all headships, deanships and vice-chancellorships because such posts would give them no time to pursue their research.

However, it should be remembered that it is academic rank which counts in such countries. Being a full professor brings with it a high salary, prestige, research funds and power - power because one is a member of committees and committees govern universities - so that, refusing administrative positions, does not make a person come down in status. Now that the private universities and armed forces universities are making departmental heads powerful, senior and permanent it goes against one's self-respect not to become the head. This threatens to turn the university into a hierarchical, non-democratic institution, something it was not even in Pakistan. Similarly, the dean is a professor, whether elected or selected, and not a boss over professors. He is fast being made as something higher than a full professor whereas, in the academic world, the highest academic rank is that of the (full) professor. Even vice-chancellors are chosen from among the professors.

In short, the idea that the faculty are 'teachers' who, like high school teachers, can be ordered about; whose services can be bought for a fee; who are not governors in the university; who are not the colleagues but are the subordinates of the administrators - this idea is gaining ground. This idea creates a lack of self-respect among academics. It takes away power from their voice because individuals accept as their true status the status others give them. Thus, one loses respect for one's self; and if one does not respect himself others do not respect him either. This creates subservience since teachers are never Chomskys or Einsteins. Teachers disseminate ideas created by others and, if they do it well, it is a very fine and much-needed service. But it is not their job to produce ideas of their own; to create new knowledge. That is the job of research scholars. What universities did was to combine these two roles and the faculty was, ideally, composed of scholars-teachers. This is changing in Pakistan. Both the private and the public sector universities demand only teachers not scholar-teachers. The want control and subservience not new ideas, scholarship and dissent. The dissenting intellectuals, who always preferred the university to any other service, will soon be removed or they will be phased out. The university will now become the ideal high school - subservient and unoriginal even if it is efficient.