Time to stand up for change

Time to stand up for change
by Dr Parvaiz Naim

posted December 15, 2002

Soon after losing in the election to the post of dean a professor managed to get appointed as vice chancellor - of the same university! This is just an example of how our public universities have been getting leadership. Will abolishing the University Grants Commission and setting up a Commission for Higher Education make any difference in the way our public universities are managed? To answer this question let us first examine the kind of institutions that most of our public universities have become.

A quick comparison would tell us that private universities are teaching courses for which there is a market demand. Their salary structure is flexible and helps attract top professionals in any given subject. The public universities on the other hand have some departments that do not seem to have any understanding of the changed needs of the job market. And if that was not bad enough, some of the public university teachers continue to provide obsolete information to students. Consequently, an increasing number of students continue to get higher education that is of little or no relevance.

Why do such dinosaur courses or even full departments in the public universities continue to exist? Perhaps because no serious effort was made to revisit the relevance of the curricula to the needs of the market. Only the number of students showing up for admission in a department was seen as a good enough reason to continue business as usual. No one has ever tried to find out why a growing number of students continue to queue up for admission and what happens to them after they graduate.

Traditionally, many parents still want their children to become doctors and engineers. That is why we see a large number of students enrolled in pre-medical and pre-engineering programmes. This tidal wave of students breaks its momentum after the intermediate level examination results are out. A fraction of these students are admitted into medical and engineering colleges. The majority of the remaining students then apply for admission to the public universities. Here most of the students enrolled in pre-engineering studies end up in the departments of physics, chemistry and mathematics. Pre-med students try pharmacy, microbiology and biochemistry or settle for botany and zoology. Other departments in the social and natural sciences, business and the arts also get varying numbers of students.

One grossly overlooked factor is the relevance of pre-medical courses to the actual needs of the studying in a medical college. For two years a pre-med student is taught to memorize Latin names of different structures of animals and plants. Those who memorize these well are admitted to medical colleges and switch to memorizing Latin names of human body structures. Most of those who do not memorize the Latin names of animal and plant structures well go on to study animal and plants in more detail and come back as pre-med teachers, ending up instead teaching these Latin names. How can this vicious cycle be broken? One way is to organize meetings of university departments that train pre-med teachers with representatives of institutions that teach medicine and subjects like agriculture and forestry. The outcome could help streamline the pre-medical curriculum making it target-oriented, and prompt universities to better prepare the would-be pre-med teachers.

Before the private universities began to surface in the country, some public universities did try to address certain market needs in their own way. For example, the physics department at some places gave birth to the applied physics department and chemistry later evolved into applied chemistry. But in general, a strong resistance to change has prevailed in our public universities. Part of the reason has to do with the presence of some teachers who have obsolete knowledge but who - having gradually climbed up the management ladder - unfortunately wield considerable influence on decisions related to higher education.

Unlike most other professionals, university teachers in Pakistan have traditionally enjoyed a certain level of immunity from any appraisal of their performance. There is no clear mechanism to ensure that teachers upgrade their professional knowledge and skills. Not long ago, some teachers demonstrated against undergoing a refresher course, and called it 'insult' to their professional integrity.

Any librarian will tell you that it is a rare treat to see a teacher come in the library for consulting any literature. Only a small fraction of university teachers regularly attend seminars and conferences in their respective fields. Many teachers would complain that this is because of a lack of funds. But more often then not, the main reason is that very few teachers would want to make the effort that goes into preparing a presentation that would have to be delivered at a professional seminar (a requirement that would also perhaps enable them to get funding from the conference organizers).

Like any other profession, university teaching has its share of good and not-so-good people. It is not unusual to find teachers who continue to train their students in rote learning, dictating notes in the classroom, and discouraging the intellectual discussion that one might expect at university level. Many such teachers bring to the class their 'century old' notes. One such teacher defended his approach by saying; "I teach internal structures of living organisms. What could possibly change in the structure to require a change in my notes?" Good argument. But the truth of the matter is that this argument covers only half the story.

In fact it is unthinkable to teach about structure without relating it to its functions. The honourable teacher avoids relating the structure of the organism with its function, thus killing the need for any intellectual discourse in the class. Such an approach also provides teacher a certain sense of immunity in that there is then no need to consult any recent literature or to go through the heaps of new information published every month on a particular subject. How can such a practice continue for long? Well, at the university level, a teacher sets his or her own question paper and grades the students according to his or her own preferences. There is no internal or external quality control - and I do not advocate any either. An external examiner is required only for students engaged in research. And this is where we get to see the real competence of a teacher.

Research not teaching skills is the basis for hiring university teachers. In addition, teachers of science subjects cannot qualify for a higher grade unless they have a certain number of scientific articles published in a journal of repute. Many senior teachers will tell you that it is not practical to get any worthwhile research done by a student who is available only for a short period. For example, at the Master of Science level a student spends less than a year on a research project. It is guided and only enables the student to acquire the scientific and methodological tools needed to examine a given issue.

In general, a teacher will not bother much about the relevance of the research topic to the country's needs. In fact, most teachers with foreign qualifications continue to do research on a topic that they previously worked on for their doctoral training. This seems the easier way out since much of their new research owes to work they have already done for their Ph.D or relates to new information on an already familiar subject. Hence, it is a safer bet for many such teachers to continue on this line for as long as possible. Those who do move away from this preferred path and take up issues of local significance often face major challenges in their new research. The first challenge is to acquire in-depth understanding of the issue and the second is to obtain relevant literature on that issue. The third and most important is deciding on where to begin and how big a bite to take (i.e., how big a project to embark upon). Indeed it is the last step which is the real test of the analytical abilities of a teacher. In the long run, it influences the kind and level of knowledge and skills that teachers will eventually pass on to their students.

I once arranged a small grant for a public university to conduct research on Pakistan's environmental issues. My request to the vice-chancellor and the deans was to ask teachers to develop a long-term research plan for, say, five years. Then, to select a topic of relevance to the country, slice it up into smaller researchable segments and ask each research student to work on a segment of his or her choice. Over a period of time, this approach would generate sufficient information to perhaps solve some of our real-life problems. Unfortunately, the vice-chancellor and his deans resisted this idea and told me: "We cannot tell a teacher what research topic he or she should work on. If you want to help the university, just give us the money. Do not attach any strings to it."

A senior professor of the same public university once told a room full of journalists: "We do not want to fill up the coffers of businessmen by doing research on soaps and perfumes. We are scientists and we will pursue research topics of our choice." No wonder the local soap and perfume industry has such a small share in the national market.

So what kind of research is being conducted in our public universities? Let me just share with you a few examples which do not necessarily represent a holistic picture but serve to illustrate the need for some kind of quality control.

For example, I recall seeing a master's thesis from one of our most elite universities that addressed the issue of volcanic ash dispersal, and wondered why the teacher could not guide his student into selecting a more relevant topic. One senior teacher engaged his students in trying to "neutralize" a drum full of obsolete pesticide in an anecdotal manner, trying different chemicals on it rather than first acquainting himself with the published information on how to handle such potent chemicals. Other getting bad guidance from their teacher the students suffered health complications as a result of handling hazardous chemicals without proper protective gear. Another teacher gave his students genetically modified bacteria for research without first ensuring that proper containment and biosafety guidelines were followed. Who knows how the bacteria would have affected the students and what would have happened had they been released into the environment because of the improper handling. In fact it is not uncommon to see research students using extremely hazardous material, both chemical and biological, without appropriate protective gear, or disposing off hazardous waste in an improper manner, all under the guidance of their teachers.

Then there are examples of M.Phil candidates carrying out research experiments without any 'control' (a 'control' serves as a yardstick or a benchmark in a scientific experiment). Ironically, the research supervisor in one case insisted that this did "not make any difference". One Ph.D candidate engaged in research on mixed industrial waste water analyzed samples using methods that were actually designed for analyzing irrigation water. Another Ph.D student came up with a process for treating tannery waste, which was no less than a fairy tale way of doing things. Evidently the teachers did not bother to look up the relevant literature on the topics and allowed the students to go astray. Thankfully, in the last example given above, the head of the funding agency honoured my recommendations and asked the concerned university not to award any degree on the research or to publish its findings.

But it does not work like that in all cases. For a teacher, it becomes a matter of prestige to make sure that his or her research students get their theses approved in the very first round of examination. Some teachers ensure that by giving the best possible training and guidance. Others do so by some other means, like selecting an external examiner who would not say 'no' - either because he or she is a friend or because does not know any better. In my own experience of working with seven universities at home and abroad I know that in all cases it was never the fault of the student if things went wrong. How could it be? It was a guided research. The teacher was responsible for each and every step taken, every experiment designed and conducted, and every line of the thesis written. Alas the external examiner could never say: "I pass the student because he did what he was told. But I must declare failure of the teacher for not providing the right guidance to the student."

The examples given above are of very senior teachers. Junior teachers do not supervise research for students enrolled in M.Phil and Ph.D degrees. These full professors continue to train, quite badly, the young generation of this country semester after semester, year after year. They sit on high-level committees and influence the way our educational system shapes. And where do their students go? In most cases they end up in the teaching profession, disseminating the same voodoo science to the next generation. That is why I strongly believe that a university should not allow its graduates to make a debut as a teacher in their own alma mater. Let these graduates cross-fertilize ideas in another university for at least three years before letting them apply for a job in their alma mater. This should perhaps minimize the inbreeding syndrome that has brought our public universities to their present state.

As for teachers, they should carry out a self-assessment of the courses they offer. They can ask their old students of what use a particular course was to them. Since the teaching time is usually not more than ten hours a week, teachers can have plenty of time for assessing their own performance.

Each department should try to gather information on the job placement of its graduates. Where do they go after gradating? What kind of work do they do? What knowledge and skills do they need to make it in the marketplace with prospective employers? Which types of institutions hire them? Where else is the potential demand for such graduates? How many graduates in a subject are needed in the country? What percentage of the graduates never makes use of the knowledge acquired from the department? What percentage goes abroad for higher studies? How should the department's resources be used to best address the students' needs for a better career? All these issues need serious attention and a strong administration to address these effectively.

But the administration in the public universities is run in a highly arbitrary manner. The departmental chair is a three-year rotational position shared by the senior teachers. This is where the problems begin to surface in a university. Most of the science teachers have no management training. When given charge of a department most try to maintain the status quo. This means that they avoid taking any tough decision or disciplinary action against anyone. Even an outsider visiting the department can gauge this incompetence. Then there are those who do not want to part with the big chair. There are examples of senior teachers in some universities who declined to hand over the departmental charge to their designated successors and resorted to rallying political support from students and like-minded teachers in a bid to hang on to the chair.

In general, there is strong resistance to accepting any 'outsider' as department head, dean, registrar or vice-chancellor. Many senior faculty members in our universities see the holding of these positions as a right. But none of them have the requisite training for such administrative jobs. While giving guest lectures at the National Institute of Public Administration, the Pakistan Institute of Management and the Pakistan Administrative Staff College, I never came across any administrator from any university participating in the training. I suggested to two vice-chancellors to institute a management-training programme for teachers designated for administrative posts. In my view for example, all professors who might one day hold an administrative position should be made to undergo special management training. The training should be a mix of university rules and regulations, managerial responsibilities, the exercise of discretionary powers, and conflict-resolution. There must be also be a detailed and properly conceived procedure for handling grievances and it should be made public within the university. The rules of business on which the administration operates should be printed in readable language and should be accessible to students through the university's website and its bookstore.

The other important aspect relates to student counseling or providing them a useful career planning service. Unfortunately, this is a totally neglected area in Pakistan. A strong system of counselling students and advising them on their career options can help rectify faults in our education system. If students were made to understand the value of what they learn in the university, they would be less likely to sign up for courses that do not help them achieve their career objectives.

Fortunately, the time is ripe for making a change in the way our public universities sound today. A scientist of international repute currently heads the federal ministries of science & technology and education. Since he has risen from the ranks of a public university, one can safely assume that he knows what ails our public education and research system. And to do his job well, he has consulted with those who are accomplished managers of leading universities. The outcome of these consultations has resulted in the recommendations of the steering committee of the Commission for Higher Education. For example, the new parallel tenure track proposed by the commission should, over time, rid our universities of much of the deadwood. The increased allocation for funds set aside for Ph.D students should help improve the standard of research. The most critical part in these reforms will be convincing the parties involved of the need for a comprehensive restructuring of university fees and administration. Those who see it coming have colluded in a last ditch attempt to resist the change. But those who want a better future for Pakistan's young generation have to stand up and support these changes.

The author is currently the executive director of an environmental and social uplift programme in Nepal.