Whither and wither

‘Whither’ is a word concerned with direction, as in ‘whither shall we go’; and ‘wither’ is a word that speaks of decay and a loss of vitality. Both words may be applied in the context of the state of Higher Education in Pakistan. Education at any level has never been a priority of any government since partition, and so it remains today. Underfunded, under-resourced and undervalued the education of the people, young and old, which make up this nation has never merited an investment of more than 4 per cent of GDP. Higher education, the apex of educational attainment and represented by our universities is not only under-funded and under-everything-else, it is perennially tainted by scandals revolving around plagiarism, nepotism and poor management. Those of our brighter and wealthier students and their parents who want to advance educationally have for many years opted to go abroad. ‘Abroad’ offers better teachers, better facilities, an equitable marking system free of corruption and, at the end of their studies, students who go ‘abroad’ have a qualification that has international credibility which many of our home-grown qualifications do not. If you are poor and bright you have few options and ‘abroad’ isn’t one of them.

But what if ‘abroad’ were somehow to be able to come to us? What if the benefits of a foreign education system could somehow get transplanted to Pakistan? This is not such a fanciful notion, and something very like this has been in gestation for a while. The plan was to establish four world-class universities in partnership with Germany, Italy, Austria and China. In the case of the latter a rector and senior Chinese faculty members have already been selected. It was planned that the four universities would have allowed Pakistani students to obtain world-class degrees without leaving the country (and we note that Pakistani parents spend around 80 billion rupees per annum funding their children’s education abroad) and would have attracted students to Pakistan from the Middle East and beyond. The cost of the project was to have been around 160 billion the equivalent of two years parental expenditure. Prime Minister Gilani had approved the project and given the necessary go-aheads and now the entire programme is on hold, allegedly a victim of cost-cutting exercises and the need for ‘further consultation.’

A committee set up to review the project recommended slashing the budget to 72 billion, and this after the provinces have been allocated several billion rupees worth of land. The provincial governments were themselves apparently supportive of the programme. The core of the project was around science and technology and research and development areas in which we lag far behind virtually all of our neighbours. Pakistan has not established a single internationally recognized research and development programme in sixty years India and China both have hundreds. International companies like Siemens Eriksson had already expressed strong interest and we could have seen between fifteen and twenty R and D centres established in these new universities nationally. The costs of the project were not excessive, being around the same as setting up NUST, and construction costs were between 1500 and 2500 per square foot reasonable at today’s prices. We now have egg on our faces as we have to backtrack on the appointments to faculty and other staff that have already been made. Education is not cheap and quality education requires substantial investment. This looks like being yet another opportunity missed because of a failure to prioritise that which the country is most in need of high-quality higher education.