Pakistan’s Higher Education System

History, Status, Assessment

Pervez Hoodbhoy

ContentsIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Education Under Colonialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3The Hindu-Muslim Split . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71947–2001 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Early History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10HE Faculty Deficit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Secondary School Feeder System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2002–Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18High Growth Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Economic Survey, Ministry of Finance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19International Rankings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22The Balance Sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Contemporary Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25The Quality Conundrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25University-Extremism Nexus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Academic Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Abstract

Higher education in Pakistan is analyzed here within the context of the country’shistorical and political development. Critical for understanding the present is adescription of the state of education of Muslims well before the partition of India.From 1947 onwards, growth periods in higher education are identified and theirimpact evaluated. The benefits of increased access are weighed against theproblems created by the post-2002 rapid expansion of the university system.Academic freedom and campus culture are examined together with the role

P. Hoodbhoy (*)Forman Christian College, Lahore, Pakistane-mail: pervezhoodbhoy@fccollege.edu.pk

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020P. M. Sarangapani, R. Pappu (eds.), Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia,Global Education Systems, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3309-5_64-1

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universities have played in fostering terrorism. The most vexing issue is to definequality of education, without which comparisons are meaningless. It is arguedthat at least for the hard sciences, and probably social sciences and humanities aswell, the present international ranking system is inadequate and education spe-cialists need to come up with a general framework that takes into account groundrealities specific to countries like Pakistan.

Keywords

History of Pakistani universities · Higher Education Commission · Qualityconundrum · University-terrorism nexus · Academic freedom

Introduction

At the outset let us quickly glance at the size of Pakistan’s higher education system:As of 2019, there were 195 officially registered universities with about 45,000teachers and 1.6 million students, almost 40% of which are females (Academiamagazine, an internet publication of the higher education commission.). To this mustbe added 1675 degree colleges with 0.5 million students studying for bachelor leveldegrees (Pakistan Economic Survey 2018–2019). Not included in the tally arecolleges and universities that are unregistered and which typically operate fromshopping plazas and business centers. The government spends 2.1–2.4% of the GNPon education as a whole with HE getting about 15% of this. Public demand for HE isstrong but only 6–7% of the age cohort has access. Compared to, say, Iran which hasa third of the population but three times as many students in universities, this numberis small but the rate of growth in Pakistan is far higher. Over the decades, govern-ments have shown increasing seriousness: grants to the Higher Education Commis-sion (HEC) peaked at $660 million in 2018. Even though the grant amount waseffectively halved in 2019 both by budget cuts and devaluation of the Pakistanirupee, there is more financial commitment to higher education today than in decadespast.

These numbers show progress but they tell only a part of the story. Questions offundamental importance remain unaddressed. Their answers are not to be found inpublished data. In fact, some are normative in nature and thus can only be qualita-tively probed. “Quality” is the most fundamental of these because it lies at the core ofacademics. Defining this woolly concept is difficult. Nevertheless, an attempt will bemade to grapple with this vexing issue at a later point simply because no analysis canbe meaningful without at least a partial understanding. Journal papers and PhDtheses on the HE system do not address this knotty but important question: what isthe value added when a student goes through the Pakistani university system?

This chapter begins with a roundup of education in colonial times. The state ofeducation in Pakistan cannot be understood without a close look at history and thesocial-political forces that gave birth to the country in 1947. In subsequent years,colleges and universities had to be created from virtually a scratch. Periods of growth

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under different governments are identified. Probing the quality of higher educationin the Pakistani environment is considered next, followed by an identification ofmajor challenges.

Some essential preliminaries: a university consists of faculty, students, adminis-tration, and physical infrastructure. Its purpose is to transmit existing knowledge,create new knowledge, and stimulate analytical and creative powers. Properlyfunctioning universities are engines of progress. The faculty is the single-mostimportant determinant of academic quality, followed by student quality. A strong,competent, well-qualified professor can be a tower of strength for a department for avery long time. Conversely, the appointment of even a single mediocre and incom-petent person, who later gains tenure, reduces the pressure for intellectual alertnessand scrupulousness in the university as a whole. With time that person rises topositions of administrative authority, depressing standards and reducing the impor-tance of merit as a criterion for progress. A university is a complex ecosystem whosesmooth functioning demands a competent administration with integrity. Physicalinfrastructure is, of course, a prerequisite and its maintenance is the administration’sjob. However, it is a subsidiary function.

Colleges, at least in the South Asian context, are smaller entities with feweracademic programs that generally offer degrees up to the bachelor’s level only. In theBritish model – which is followed in Pakistan – a degree awarding college isattached to a university. So, even if a student actually studies only at one particularcollege, the degree he or she receives is awarded by the university to which thecollege is attached. As the pressure for higher education mounts in South Asia, it isincreasingly common to have colleges upgraded – with or without significantinfrastructural improvement – to the university status. In Pakistan, a major structuralchange at the bachelor’s level is currently being undertaken: whereas earlier abachelor’s degree was awarded after 2 years (13–14 years of education), this isbeing phased out in favor of 4-year bachelor’s degree (13–16 years of education).The change will likely be completed by 2021.

Excluded from consideration here is technical and vocational education impartedin polytechnic institutes for producing particular skills: refrigeration and air condi-tioning, farming technology, food processing and preservation, car maintenance,computer hardware upkeep, electrical systems, paramedical training, etc. Diplomasand B.Tech degrees are awarded by institutions that fall under the jurisdiction ofprovincial governments. In spite of a huge youth bulge, there are only about half amillion youth under training in about 3500 institutes. While this is doubtlessimportant and sizeable, any attempt to cover vocational and technical educationwould take us too far afield from the main purpose here, which is higher education.

Education Under Colonialism

The colonization of India evokes strong sentiments even today. Imperialism, some-times garbed as the White Man’s burden, had made the 1800s a dismal time forordinary people. After his visit to India in 1930, Will Durant, the American historian

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and philosopher, wrote that he had come across the greatest crime ever in history andwas astonished “any government could allow its subjects to sink to such misery.”That government had indeed ruled with brute force at times, but its real strength layin a system of governance whose civil service provided its steel frame which, in turn,was the result of systematic thinking. As Edward Said so brilliantly underscored,orientalist scholars – the ones to whom we owe important investigations of India’shistory and languages – were handmaidens of an unjust order. But where and whenhas human progress been linear? For all the terrible things imperialism did, there issurely one good thing that came off it: modern education.

Modern education must be contrasted against traditional education whose over-arching goal is to prepare a person for a better life after death. Hindu epistemologyderives from various holy texts, traditions, practices, and rituals. Muslim epistemol-ogy, on the other hand, begins with the Holy Qur’an believed by Muslims to be theliteral word of God. It is understood as the fount of all religious knowledge andtherefore there is emphasis on memorizing it. For the ultraorthodox, it is also thesource of temporal knowledge. For them an appropriate interpretation – possibleonly after a thorough study of the Arabic language – offers the solution to everyproblem, spiritual and social. Some even go further and say that scientific facts anddiscoveries were also anticipated many centuries before the advent of modernscience. This trend is now to be found in a rapidly Hinduizing India as well.

Religious education was the largest component of traditional education in colo-nial India but functional needs did receive attention. The language of power inMughal India being Persian, schools taught Persian grammar and writing to bothMuslims and Hindus. Bustan and Gulistan, which are books of poetry by the Persianpoet Saadi, contain vast numbers of anecdotes derived from daily life and werewidely taught for the wisdom they contained. Writing applications, correspondence,and administrative terminology were necessary requirements for employability. Aperson who knew these was considered well educated.

This chapter concerns itself only with the evolution of modern education and sowill exclude madrassas, both those that are exclusively religious as well as thosewhich impart a measure of life skills. The “modern” in education is to be understoodherein as deriving firmly from the philosophy of the Enlightenment. However, theEnlightenment philosophy is not a Europe-specific phenomenon and it is likely thatit could have occurred elsewhere in the world at some later time because its ultimatebasis lies in universal human rationality, the exercise of which is scattered acrossChinese, Hindu, Greek, and Muslim cultures. Brilliant individuals within thesecultures were able to make startling new discoveries but there was no notion of auniverse entirely explainable through physical law.

For definitional purposes: education derived from Enlightenment principles aimsto equip an individual for functioning in the competitive modern world and tounderstand it on the basis of reason and evidence rather than what is contained inholy books. Thus, it has an epistemological foundation wherein truth is obtainedsolely by humans, without assistance or interference from a supernatural entity.Knowledge is created by human agency, the result of careful investigations. Moderneducation has textbooks that are updated from time to time – there is no holy book of

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science, sociology, or economics. Memorization is considered of lesser importance;the goal of education is to teach students how to apply general principles uponparticular situations and to solve problems through critical thinking.

As defined above, modern education in British India – or more accurately itsmutated versions – was spread by three principal agents: the British government,Christian missionaries, and reformers of education who were both Hindu andMuslim. There was considerable disagreement about exactly what should be taughtand by use of which language. An excellent summary on the language issue may befound in Rahman (1996), who details the back-and-forth between Anglicists andOrientalists in the early 1800s. Anglicists were totally dismissive of India’s nativecivilizations as having any worth, while Orientalists saw some value and believedthat effective rule was not possible using solely the English language. Of course, theBritish were aware that a general education was a double-edged sword. On the onehand it improved their capacity to rule India from afar. But, on the other hand,educated natives could start wanting the liberties of their masters – a potentiallydangerous outcome.

Structurally, the Indian system followed the lines of whichever system was thenin vogue in England, and changes in it directly reflected the changes happening backin the home country. A steady decline of India’s traditional education system of tols,patshalas, maktabs, and madrassas followed the English Education Act of 1835.Lord Bentinck, then Governor General of British India, announced that funds spenton education by the East India Company would henceforth be directed only towardsthose teaching a Western curriculum with English as the language of instruction. The1835 Act was a victory for the Anglicists and Lord Macaulay who thought that theEnglish had “found a great people sunk in the lowest depths of slavery andsuperstition” and could only be liberated by acquiring European knowledge.

The year 1857 saw the establishment of universities in Calcutta, Bombay, andMadras. They were modelled formally along the lines of the University of London.But the preferred model in India became that of Oxford and Cambridge once theUniversity of London decided in 1858 to abandon its affiliating principle withcolleges by opening up the examinations to everyone whether they attended anaffiliated college or not. This period saw vigorous arguments for and against havingautonomous universities, i.e., those free from having to act as examining bodies. Acentury and a half later such arguments still echo.

Setting up formal structures is one matter but, in fact, the Indian copies of Oxfordand Cambridge wholly lacked the intellectual vibrancy of the universities they weremodelled after. Though modern in a sense, it was not the Enlightenment ideal thatthey sought to promote. Instead, their main purpose was to create a loyal English-speaking class familiar with the machinery of government, and hence attractive tothe Indian urban middle class who sought government jobs. In the earliest phase,they were tasked with standardizing and testing via examinations the educationprovided by schools and colleges that had been established in their respectiveprovinces. Direct teaching was a later, subsidiary function. Well into the 1930s, asenior British university administrator of a time rued: “most of the students of anIndian college are candidates for the Bachelor’s degree in Arts or Science and are

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attaining a standard of education which is more fittingly achieved in Europe in thehigher schools” (Bruce 1933).

The case of Punjab University is particularly relevant in understanding theevolution of higher education in what eventually became Pakistan. Macaulay’svictory had not been total: in 1869, a small victory for Oriental learning in vernacularlanguages was won with the authorization of the Panjab University College atLahore. This was the first attempt to establish instruction in diverse languagesused in Punjab. A committee appointed by the British found that, “the whole bodyof native subscribers are very strongly in favour of establishing in connection withthe College, a large and efficient Oriental School, in which, however, the Orientallanguages should be taught on modern and enlightened principles, and combinedwith instruction in general knowledge” (ibid., Bruce, p. 29). In the Oriental Schoolwe learn that seven teachers were appointed – one in Arabic, one in Persian, three inSanskrit, one in Urdu, and one in Hindi (ibid., Bruce, p. 48). The College catered tothe rich elite of the area and provided them employable skills. A total of 1514 werestudents who were admitted in the “Maulvi, Pandit, Munshi” category and 698 werepassed. Maulvis and Pundits catered to Muslim and Hindu religious needs whileMunshis were clerks and keepers of records.

Panjab College was the seed: eventually its status was elevated and it joined threeolder Indian universities as a university. In 1912, 21 teaching institutions wereaffiliated to it (ibid., Bruce, p. 128). These consisted of an Oriental College; threeprofessional colleges and one professional school of engineering; and 16 artscolleges. All the professional colleges, but only five of the 16 arts colleges weresituated in Lahore. Of these 21 institutions, five were maintained by Christianmissionary societies.

Most nineteenth century Indian students were ill equipped by their school edu-cation and so found the sciences either too difficult or gave them lesser value. Thiscan be seen from Table 1; arts and law subjects were strongly subscribed to, followedby medical studies. Engineering and science trailed far behind.

Long after Macaulay, the vexatious issue of medium of instruction continued todivide British rulers and the Indians they ruled over. Macaulay had been explicit inwanting to create “a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions wegovern.” And although his “revolution” was resented by wide swathes of Indiansociety, both Hindus and Muslims, it drew no significant collective protests. But theage of Indian nationalism was drawing closer: its political manifestations were theIndian National Congress (1885) and All India Muslim League (1906).

Table 1 Performance after the first 10 years of Panjab University College (Lahore). Derived froma manuscript table by Dr. G. W. Leitner (Sept, 1882) (ibid. Bruce, p. 46)

Examinations No. of candidates No. passed

Arts 1747 885

Law 303 151

Engineering 26 8

Medical 186 145

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Mahatma Gandhi (who came later still) was educated in England but saw westerneducation as dangerous, particularly because it was administered through themedium of a strange tongue. It would break the concordance within society, hesaid, creating a gap between the masses and the rulers and produce a class of the so-called educated who were mere imitators:

It is my considered opinion that English education in the manner it has been given hasemasculated the English-educated Indian, it has put a severer strain upon the Indian students’nervous energy, and has made of us imitators. The process of displacing the vernaculars hasbeen one of the saddest chapters in the British connection. Rammohan Rai would have beena greater reformer, and Lokmanya Tilak would have been a greater scholar, if they had not tostart with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly inEnglish. Their effect on their own people, marvelous as it was, would have been greater ifthey had been brought up under a less unnatural system. No doubt they both gained fromtheir knowledge of the rich treasures of English literature. But these should have beenaccessible to them through their own vernaculars. No country can become a nation byproducing a race of imitators (Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal & Gandhi Research Foundation,Young India, p. 130). (27 April 1921)

Gandhi’s arguments were cogent and echoed by others as well. Quite apart fromseeing modern education as a Trojan Horse that would undermine the faith, Muslimswere far more suspicious of the English language than Hindus. A century later,arguments against the use of English are common in Pakistan. They are part of alarger unresolved question: how steadfastly is tradition to be protected from theravages of modernity? What is the “right” balance between the pull of the past andthe push towards the future?

The Hindu-Muslim Split

The Macaulay Revolution had offended a wide swathe of Indians and inspired aresponse from Hindus and Muslims that had striking commonalities. Hindu reviv-alists such as the Arya Samaj were stridently against modern education, as were theWahabbis who believed in a pure form of Arabic Islam unadulterated by Hinduaccretions. Revivalists in both communities saw their societies’ decline as directlyresulting from straying away from the true path and from contamination by otherfaiths. Vigorous reformers of the Brahmo Samaj contested this and were generallywell received by Hindus. Among the Muslim ashrafiyya a modernist movement wasinspired by Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) and others.

The degree of success enjoyed by such modernist reformers was, however, notequal. Traction among Hindus turned out to be easier to get than among Muslims; arelatively greater fraction of Hindus were able to see the benefits in terms of personaladvancement and access to jobs and professions. In 1827, Hindu princes, chieftainsand gentlemen belonging to the western part of India subscribed Rs 215,000 for“founding one or more Professorship for teaching the languages, literature, sciencesand moral philosophy of Europe” (Parulekar, Quoted in Rahman, op cit., p. 31).

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Thus differences in Hindu-Muslim educational achievement increased over timeat every level – school, college, and university. This was to profoundly affect thefuture of both communities, widening distances between them, and ultimatelybecoming an important cause for the partition of India. While this is well known,the facts to be presented below are quite startling.

Some statistics: the University of Calcutta, as mentioned above, was the firstsecular western style university in India and set standards as far away as Punjab.Only a few Muslims applied or qualified for admission, the requirements beingrigorous by the standards of the time. Although the populations were commensuratein size, just two Muslims passed the first B.A. examination held in 1858 (SyedMurtaza Ali 1971). The first Muslim graduate passed his B.A. in 1861 with the nextone graduating in 1865. Out of a total of 250 graduates by 1870, only 12 wereMuslim. The university calendar up to 1868 shows only one Muslim had passed theBachelor of Law examination (ibid.).

At the school level, there were far fewer Muslim students enrolled as compared toHindus. From Table 2 one sees that in Bengal the number of students enrolled ingovernment colleges and schools in 1841 was 751 Muslims against 3188 Hindus. In1856, this nosedived to 731 Muslims against 6448 Hindus.

The low enrollment was a direct consequence of the Macaulay Revolutiontogether with the reluctance of Bengali Muslims to expose their children to educa-tion that was not centered around Islamic teachings. Earlier, under Governor-GeneralWarren Hastings, the Calcutta Madrassa had been established by the demand ofMuslims. It was the recruiting grounds for native public servants and had a strongfunctional Persian-centered component. But the loss of British financial support,followed by the abolition in 1837 of Persian as the court language, marginalized theMadrassa. A protest petition signed by 8312 Muslims, including the ulema andleading gentlemen of Calcutta was submitted to the authorities (ibid. Quoted asreport of Madrassah Education Committee, 1941, p. 149). However, that provedfutile. Muslim participation in education began to decline yet further: In 1893, out of44 Deputy Inspectors of Schools in Bengal Presidency only two were Muslims, outof 181 Sub-Inspectors only 9 were Muslims, and out of 279 teachers in GovernmentHigh Schools only 11 were Muslims (ibid., p. 196).

Closer to the seat of power, the situation was only marginally better. The well-endowed Delhi College had started teaching English and Western education throughthe medium of English in April 1834. The historian Hafeez Malik notes that in theCollege a dual system existed with two departments: the Western Department, where

Table 2 Student enrollment in colleges and schools in Bengal (ibid.)

Year Hindu Muslim

1841 3188 751

1846 3846 606

1852 3814 796

1856 6448 731

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modern Western education was imparted through the medium of English, and theOriental Department where modern education was imparted in Urdu together withthe teaching of Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit (Malik 1980). Still, traditional Muslimscholars looked with much suspicion at Delhi College, fearing that this would beused as an instrument for proselytization – a fear that was not groundless since twoHindu students had converted to Christianity causing a big uproar. Muslim scholarsalso disapproved teaching the new science that openly challenged ideas flowingfrom Greek times. In fact, before he converted to modernism, Sir Syed Ahmad Khanhad argued on Islamic principles against the notion of a moving earth andheliocentrism (Hoodbhoy 2016a).

The belief that English education would undermine faith seeped deep. It was nothelped by the open proselytization by Christian missionaries who had come fromEngland for specifically this very purpose. Malik notes that, “Behaviorally, the DelhiMuslims’ reaction to modernity varied from apathy to partial acceptance, from overthostility to the final acknowledgment of its superiority and the assiduous cultivationof modern education” (ibid., p. 50). An essay writing competition in 1870 in Delhiwith 30 submitted essays exposed other reservations about modern education. It washeld to be responsible for corrupting the morals and manners of students. Morespecifically that, “humility, good breeding, and respect for elders and superiors werereplaced by pride, haughtiness, and impudence” (ibid., p. 129).

The situation was quite similar in other parts of India. In Sind, Muslim studentswere only one in three although the population was 75% Muslim (The Governmentof India, Home department proceedings: education, 1873, p. 478. Quoted in Malik,ibid.). In 1872, the University of Bombay listed one Muslim who had earned hisMaster of Arts and two who earned the Bachelor of Arts. Table 3 shows thedepressed situation of Muslims in colleges and schools around 1872 in the Bombayprovince (Gujrat, Khandeish and Nagur, Deccan and Bombay, Canarese Country,and Sindh):

According to Moore 2001, by 1890 some 60,000 Indians had matriculated,chiefly in the liberal arts or law. About a third entered public administration, andanother third became lawyers. By 1887 of 21,000 mid-level civil service appoint-ments, 45% were held by Hindus, 7% by Muslims, 19% by Eurasians (one Europeanparent and one Indian), and 29% by Europeans. Of the 1000 top-level positions,almost all were held by Britons, typically with an Oxbridge degree.

Table 3 Muslim student enrollment in colleges and schools in Bombay province (1872) (Com-puted from Hafeez ibid., p. 148, Who Quotes Government of India, Home Department, Proceed-ings: Education, September 1873, P. 478–9)

Institution Muslim Total

Colleges 14 627

High Schools 59 2255

Higher Middle Schools 113 3351

Elementary Schools 1313 13,174

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Though generally socially conservative, some Indian Muslims of the time werebeginning to realize that the world had changed in ways that lacked parallels in thepast. Mirza Ghalib (1797–1869), poet par excellence, had been educated in thetraditional Muslim way. But intuitively and intellectually he had grasped thatmodernity is what had made the British masters of India. Forget Akbar and AbulFazl, said Ghalib, and look at the sahibs of England. They make their rules and lawslogically and are out there conquering nature. In one of his lesser known poemsGhalib writes in their praise: “Science and skills grew at the hands of these skilledones. Their efforts overtook the efforts of the forebears.” He was, however, excep-tional for his times.

To conclude: Muslims resisted modern education to a greater degree than otherIndians. The promise of employment in the British administration did win oversome, but this was more unusual than usual and limited almost exclusively to men.Few ventured into the sciences or mathematics, choosing the liberal arts or lawinstead. This was to be a big handicap when Pakistan emerged in 1947.

1947–2001

This section is a bird’s eye view of the first 54 years of higher education in Pakistan,a period during which expansion rates grew and shrank as different governmentstook charge. More significantly, the content and desired outcomes of education alsochanged from one to the other. We then take up two critical issues – the near absenceof adequately qualified university faculty in the early days and the paucity of feederschools.

Early History

Of the 16 universities in British India at the time of partition, Pakistan inherited onlyone teaching university, i.e., Punjab University in Lahore. Although the Universityof Sindh also formally existed at this time, it was only an examining body affiliatedwith the University of Bombay and began its role as a teaching university afterrelocating from Karachi to Hyderabad in 1951. Karachi University was alsoestablished in 1951.

Colleges in British India were the next step after matriculation from school andtheir numbers reflected the importance that the British had for a particular region. Inthe area that is now Pakistan, they were spread unevenly as were the schools whichfed into them. Some of the more notable colleges at the time of partition were:

1. Punjab: King Edward Medical College (1860, Lahore); Government College(1864, Lahore); Forman Christian College (1864, Lahore); Mayo School of Arts(1864, Lahore); Islamia College (1882, Lahore); Panjab Veterinary College(1882, Lahore); Egerton College (1886, Bahawalpur); Scotch Mission College(1889, Sialkot); Gordon College (1893, Rawalpindi); Panjab Agricultural

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College (1906, Lyallpur); Dayal Singh College (1910, Lahore); Kinnaird Collegefor Women (1913, Lahore); Mughulpura Technical College (1921, Lahore);Jamia Abbasia (1925, Bahawalpur); Hailey College of Commerce (1927,Lahore); Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College (1933, Lahore)

2. Sind: Sind Madrassa (1885, Karachi); Dayaram Jethmal Science College (1887,Karachi); Nadirshaw Eduljee Dinshaw Engineering College (1922, Karachi);Dow Medical College (1945, Karachi)

3. North Western Frontier Province: Edwardes College (1900, Peshawar);Islamia College (1913, Peshawar)

4. Balochistan: none

Looking at the above list one is immediately struck by the vast educationaldisparity between Pakistan’s present provinces such as they existed in BritishIndia. The populations in Punjab, Sindh, NWFP, and Balochistan are roughly55%, 23%, 16%, and 5% of the total, respectively. But pre-partition Punjab clearlyhad the lion’s share of colleges. Fertile soil and free availability of river water madePunjab the granary for northern India – a fact that the passage of centuries has leftunchanged. Karachi, as a sea port and the capital of Sind, comes a distant second.NWFP saw a marginal level of educational development only because of thenineteenth century British strategic imperative – known as The Great Game – thatimpelled Britain to create a bulwark against possible advances by the Russian empireinto Central Asia and Afghanistan. Balochistan was considered insufficiently impor-tant for building even a single college; in 1947, Quetta was then the only city with atleast a smattering of modern high schools. These served to educate children of thelocal elite and military officers.

With the emergence of Pakistan, many issues were debated and discussed in thenewly formed assembly but education is not known to be among them. The firstNational Education Conference was held in Karachi, 27 Nov to 1 Dec 1947.Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, sent a message read out at the conferencebut could not attend because of his ill health. The message was unequivocal inadvocating a modernist agenda: “we have to compete with the world which ismoving very fast in this direction” (M.A.Jinnah, message to the all-Pakistan Edu-cational Conference, held in Karachi on 27th November, 1947). However, unlikeJawaharlal Nehru in India, Jinnah had not put educational and scientific developmentanywhere close to the top of his agenda and saw these as just one of several thingsthat the new Pakistan would eventually need. Indeed, the allocations of the FirstFive-Year Plan in 1948 were pitifully small and wholly inadequate for producinguniversal literacy or a system of proper schools (Jalil 1998). After Jinnah’s death in1948, priorities drifted further yet: education got no mention at all in the ObjectivesResolution of 1949, the first significant development towards Pakistan’sconstitution.

The All India Muslim League, now renamed as Pakistan Muslim League, hadbeen composed largely of land owners and business magnates but also had relativelybetter educated migrants influenced by the Aligarh Movement of Sir Syed AhmadKhan. Powerful landlords in Sind and Punjab showed little or no interest in

Pakistan’s Higher Education System 11

educating the masses. In fact, some actually believed this to be subversive andactively opposed it in their areas of control, particularly in Sindh. Unsurprisingly,9 years after birth, the 1956 Constitution includes vague references to education butdoes not specify time lines or require that necessary resources be provided. But,inevitably, the public demand for education began to grow in the new state. The firstserious attempt towards universalizing education seems to have been Report of theCommission on National Education 1959 (Bengali 1999). The 1973 Constitutionwas significant in referring to the need for promoting HE but did not specify how theobjective was to be obtained nor demanded necessary resources for it.

With Jinnah’s death the Pakistan Muslim League fell apart in just a few years andpolitical chaos followed. In 1958, Pakistan experienced its first martial law, one thatlasted 10 years. The 1959 Report recommended upgradation of two existing collegesto university status (Mahmood et al. 2015). By this time General Muhammad AyubKhan was consolidating his power and contemplating the shift of Pakistan’s capitalaway from Karachi closer to the army headquarters in Rawalpindi. The new capitalwould be incomplete without a university; and so, in 1967 the University ofIslamabad began functioning in Rawalpindi even as its permanent campus wasbeing constructed in Islamabad some 15 miles away. It was later renamed Quaid-e-Azam University and was Pakistan’s only federal university at the time. By 1969,there were a total of eight universities in united Pakistan. The break up andsubsequent emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 temporarily froze furtherdevelopment.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s populist regime (1971–1977) promised to spread highereducation widely. By now West Pakistan was Pakistan. The first major increase inthe number of public universities followed the National Education Policy 1972which called for establishing new universities at Multan, Saidu Sharif, and Sukkur;and converting Jamia Islamia (Bahawalpur), Agricultural College (Tandojam), NEDCollege (Karachi), and Engineering College (Jamshoro) into universities (ibid.).Probably established in 1972 or a bit later, the University Grants Commission(UGC) was tasked with accrediting, regulating, and disbursing funds to universities,present and future. [Note: The HEC website gives 1947 as the year in which UGCwas established and many authors on Pakistani higher education have sloppilyreproduced this without further investigation. This date seems highly improbablegiven the state of chaos at the time. The Report of Commission on NationalEducation (1959) recommended setting up a UGC. This was reiterated in the 1972education policy. Therefore, its birth date is likely 1972–1973.] As mentionedearlier, the 1956 Constitution had been toothless on matters related to education.So was the 1973 Constitution. It appears that the first substantive piece of legislationfor higher education was the University Grants Commission Act XXIII of 1974.

General Zia-ul-Haq, who had Bhutto hanged, came with the mission of Islamiz-ing education, not expanding it. Two years after ousting Bhutto in 1977, throughEducation Policy 1979, his regime resolved against further expansion of the publicuniversity sector. The sole exception was women-only universities, a component ofhis mission (ibid.). The first private Pakistani university was established in this era:the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in 1984, followed by the

12 P. Hoodbhoy

Aga Khan University Hospital in 1985. Building up upon the Islamic Conferenceorganized in 1974 by Bhutto, General Zia ordered the establishment of the Interna-tional Islamic University in Islamabad. Lavishly funded by Saudi Arabia, it has alarge presence in the city today.

Zia’s years 1977–1988 can be called the years of not just Islamization but also ofindigenization. At the time of independence, Pakistan’s ruling elite was initiallydrawn principally from those who had studied in missionary schools and collegeswhere the medium of instruction was English. This was widened at a later point toinclude public school graduates, but only after they were well tutored into English.High rank army officers spoke English among themselves, conversing with servantsand lower ranks in Urdu. Facility in English was the passport for upward mobilitywhether in government, military, or academia. Zia changed this elitist culture overhis 11 years.

The new norm switched slowly but surely to Urdu in the public universities,relegating English to an ever-thinner crust of upper-class society. Presently anestimated 5–10% of university level lectures in an ordinary Pakistani university orcollege are actually delivered in English. This is in spite of the official language ofinstruction still being English, and that all printed course materials and textbooks areinvariably in English. Faculty and students equally lack language skills in a languagethat is seen as alien and excessively difficult. On the other hand, in 4–5 top-endprivate universities, English is used exclusively and Urdu is frowned upon.

More importantly, in the Zia era the requirement of adhering to the new nationalideology overshadowed the personal and professional achievements of an individualin matters that concerned appointments or promotions. Appointments to the FederalPublic Service Commission and government departments were similarly done after acheck of ideological credentials, i.e., that the candidate be knowledgeable in mattersrelated to Islam and Pakistan. Scientific and technical fields were not exempt fromthis requirement. Typical questions that prospective candidates usually prepared forinclude: remembering names of Prophet Muhammad’s wives; recitation of Dua-e-Qanut (a rather difficult prayer); the 99 Arabic names of Allah; etc. The subsequentgovernments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif (twice each during 1988–1999)did not eliminate such background checks but the practice slowly died off with timeand has become rare in recent years.

Table 4 summarizes the situation up to the turn of the century and shows thegrowth in the number of universities, as well as other degree awarding institutions(DAI’s), over a period of about 50 years (Higher Education Commission, Http://Www.Hec.Gov.Pk/New/Qualityassurance/Statistics.Htm). What it does not tell iswhether in fact all the listed ones are actual universities. Some suffer from extremedegrees of intellectual impoverishment. We now turn to the issue of universityfaculty.

Pakistan’s Higher Education System 13

HE Faculty Deficit

Higher education is much more than just building structures and calling theircollection a university. However, when education experts discuss quality of educa-tion, they invariably focus upon quantifiable factors: student-to-teacher ratio, phys-ical infrastructure, labs, and libraries. In the West this might make some sense but itcarries little meaning in Pakistan’s situation. Whatever these parameters, there islittle to be gained from a department of English where the department’s head cannotspeak or write a grammatically correct non-trivial sentence of English; a physicsdepartment where the head is confused about the operation of an incandescent lightbulb; a mathematics department where graduate students have problems with ele-mentary surds and roots; or a biology department where evolution is thought to beanti-religion and quite unnecessary to teach as part of modern biology.

The physicist Richard Feynman would have pithily described this as a cargoepiphenomenon:

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During WW-II they saw airplanes land withlots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged toimitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hutfor a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboosticking out like antennas – he’s the controller – and they wait for the airplanes to land.They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land.(Cargo cult science, by Richard P. Feynman, Caltech’s 1974 commencement address, http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/cargocult.htm)

At birth, the situation of higher education in Pakistan was dire even in numericalterms. As discussed earlier, the British had established just one university and only25–30 colleges in all the areas that now comprise Pakistan. But the situation was stillmore serious than indicated by these numbers. Because of the earlier Muslimopposition to education, in secular institutions of learning almost all senior pro-fessors and lecturers were Hindus. Once the partition riots started, they fled to Indiawithin the first year. Lahore, which had the highest concentration of colleges andPakistan’s only university, was emptied of its intellectual capital. It did not take longfor senior posts to be filled by the Muslim junior faculty of the same institution or anadjoining one. Academic standards plunged.

Table 4 Universities & degree awarding institutions (DAIs)

Year

Universities DAI’s

Public Private Public Private

1947 1 0 0 0

1960 5 0 1 0

1970 8 0 2 0

1980 19 0 2 0

1990 20 2 3 0

2000 32 14 5 8

14 P. Hoodbhoy

Chowla versus Chawla: This is but one story of how professional academic meritended up subordinate to other considerations (private communication from Prof.Amer Iqbal of GC). At Government College (GC) Lahore there have been twomathematicians in the area of number theory. One was Sarvadaman Chowla, anaccomplished mathematician who headed the mathematics department from 1937 to1947. Being Hindu, he left Lahore after the rioting began and went to PrincetonUniversity, then the University of Colorado at Boulder, and eventually becameprofessor at the University of Pennsylvania. He died in 1995 and was celebratedas a famous number theorist by the American Mathematical Society with severalimportant theorems to his name. The other was Laal Muhammad Chawla whograduated from Oxford in 1955 and then taught at GC for many years. With rathermodest professional achievements, he had only one well-cited paper. Chawla wasalso interested in Islamic studies and wrote several religious books. The GC mathsociety is named after Laal Muhammad Chawla and not the more famous and muchmore accomplished Sarvadaman Chowla; a sad commentary on how merit doesn’tget its due.

Post-partition, with merit having become a subordinate consideration, quickpromotions were to have deeply debilitating consequences. Mediocrities rose tobecome department heads, deans, and vice chancellors. Memorization becamealmost as common in universities and colleges as in schools. The well-knownEnglish chemist, J.B.S. Haldane recounts an instance that particularly impressedupon him the manner in which science is generally taught and learned in Pakistan:

I was walking near my house one Sunday afternoon when I heard a male voice raised in amonotonous chant. I supposed that I was listening to some mantras, and asked if mycompanion could identify them. The practice of repeating religious formulae is, of course,about as common in Europe as in Pakistan. But my companion stated that the language of thechant was English and the subject organic chemistry. We returned and I found he was right.The subject of the chant was aliphatic amines, with special reference to various precautions.(Haldane 1959)

It is a truism that those who undeservedly make it to the top build a protective wallaround themselves aimed at thwarting others with greater achievement and compe-tence from claiming their due. Now that fiefdoms were established, the best andbrightest young people became frustrated and started to look for overseas alterna-tives elsewhere – hence the so-called brain drain of the 1960s and 1970s. Not havinga meritocracy had put Pakistan’s HE at serious disadvantage.

An example of the difficulties faced in the hard sciences: famed theoreticalphysicist Prof. Abdus Salam’s protégé’s at Punjab University included the twinbrothers Riazuddin and Fayyazuddin. They would reminisce of the days Salamtaught a course on quantum mechanics in the 1950s. Apart from this talented duo,no other student even vaguely understood his lectures. Salam soon gave up.

In the 1960s, away from Lahore, in one natural science department the situationwas more hopeful. Salam, then the youngest full professor of theoretical physics atImperial College London, had acted as a magnet for some of Pakistan’s best minds.About a dozen Pakistanis acquired the difficult mathematical tools needed to probe

Pakistan’s Higher Education System 15

nature and succeeded in making it to Britain’s top universities. Riazuddin, Salam’sformer PhD student and a man of considerable brilliance, was invited in 1966 to setup the physics department at Islamabad University, then still in its planning stage. By1969, there was a thriving theoretical physics group at Islamabad University that wasknown for its research in an area of physics considered the most difficult andinternationally competitive. It was a remarkable achievement. Visitors to the depart-ment included world renowned physicists whose lectures bounced around the worldmuch before the Internet arrived.

By 1973, the peak had already passed. The university’s second vice-chancellorhad filled departments with sycophants and political appointees with little regard forcredentials and competence. Academic standards nose-dived. Some of the bestprofessors in the particle physics group moved on to greener pastures, others becamesteadily less active academically but more active in university politics. A secondblow was delivered in 1974 when, by an act of the Pakistani parliament, Ahmadiswere declared non-Muslims. Agitation on campus by Jamiat students forced theAhmadi faculty to flee. In the process, Islamabad University lost its best mathema-tician, Prof. Munir Rashid. Fanatical students of the Jamaat-e-Islami declared AbdusSalam a target and prevented him from lecturing on the campus after he won theNobel Prize for physics in 1979. Salam died in 1996 in London, a heartbroken tragicfigure.

The bottom line: by fortuitous circumstance it may be possible to bring togetherresearchers of high caliber that function as a strong professional group. In fact, fromtime to time that has happened. But whether a successful research group will sustainitself and for how long depends largely on values shared across the society. Praeto-rian societies value warriors, not men of intellect. Lahore was once the intellectualcenter of undivided Punjab. Four Nobel Prize winners were either born there –Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar (1910–1995) – or studied/taught there: ArthurCompton (1892–1962, lecturer PU), Har Gobind Khorana (1922–2011, studentPU), Abdus Salam (1926–1996, lecturer GC). Yet no street of Lahore is namedafter any of them; many bear the names of soldiers and martyrs.

Secondary School Feeder System

Although this chapter is on higher education, it will be important to at least mentionsalient features of the mechanism that feeds into colleges and universities. ThePakistani education system is seven-layered (Table 5). The federal and provincialministries of education control all matters related to education up to the intermediatelevel as well as colleges, and the Higher Education Commission (HEC) is respon-sible for universities. There is little coordination between the MOEs and HEC;strong institutional rivalries have made it difficult to create new college programsthat would make the college-university transition easier.

Fundamental structural problems underlie the delivery mechanism for primaryand secondary education in Pakistan. Like in other areas such as health and trans-portation, these are well known: political and bureaucratic interference,

16 P. Hoodbhoy

appointments based on considerations other than merit, corruption in awardingcontracts, lack of accountability and sound management practices, lack of interna-tionally comparable learning outcome standards, and a virtual absence of cost-efficient and high quality teacher and staff training. Mismanagement and corruptionare rampant: it has been variously estimated that between 10% and 15% of schools inPakistan have few or no students (the so-called ghost schools).

A study by ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) of learning outcomes atthe primary school level has been conducted for several years (Annual status ofeducation report 2018, http://aserpakistan.org/report). There appears to be someslow upward movement, which is a positive indication. However, across the countrya majority of teachers, particularly females, have poor content knowledge. Pakistanichildren are reasonably competent in rote reading, numeracy and arithmetic, writingfrom dictation, and reading from the Holy Quran. But reading with comprehension,life-skills knowledge, and letter writing ability are very poor.

These outcomes are not unexpected given how educational goals have beendefined. The first page of the Pakistani ministry of education website clearly setseducational priorities:

Education and training should enable the citizens of Pakistan to lead their lives according tothe teachings of Islam as laid down in the Qur’an and Sunnah and to educate and train themas a true practicing Muslim. To evolve an integrated system of national education bybringing Deeni Madaris and modern schools closer to each stream in curriculum and thecontents of education. Nazira Qur’an will be introduced as a compulsory component fromgrade I–VIII while at secondary level translation of the selected verses from the Holy Qur’anwill be offered.

International comparisons are not easily available, but one indication of standards isto compare the best in one country with the best in other countries. In the Interna-tional Physics Olympiad, Pakistan has put considerable effort and money intoselecting its best students. All those selected were from the elite “O” and “A”level streams. Over 17 years, 2001–2017, Pakistani students have won one silvermedal, ten bronze medals, and 26 honorable mentions. In 2018, Pakistan won nomedals or mentions. Iran’s tally for the same year was three silver and two bronze,and Bangladesh’s was four bronze. In other fields – mathematics, chemistry, andbiology – the results are not significantly different.

Table 5 Organizational structure of Pakistani education

Level I Kachi (or nursery)

Level II Primary school (grades 1–5)

Level III Middle school (grades 6–8)

Level IV High school (grades 9–10)

Level V Intermediate (grades 11–12), located in between school and college

Level VI College (grades 13–14 in most cases, except for 4-year programs)

Level VII Universities (15-upwards)

Pakistan’s Higher Education System 17

A quick summary for higher education in the period 1947–2001: in the first phaseof expansion, Pakistan’s higher education system saw steady growth. Starting fromessentially 0% in 1947, by 2001 roughly 3% of the eligible population had access tocolleges and universities. The quality was unsatisfactory, but the very best studentswere still able to make it to Europe and the United States as professionals – doctors,engineers, teachers, agriculturalists, etc. The very brightest (and luckiest) ones alsoestablished their presence among the wealthy of Silicon Valley. They serve to remindus of the country’s huge lurking human potential. But for the normally endowed,Pakistani universities were knowledge deserts that added little value. Considered as awhole, the system was just hobbling along. A dramatic change, however, was instore. Packed airliners crashed into the World Trade Center in New York on 11September 2001, setting off reverberations that spread across the globe. These wereto reach Pakistan’s higher education system as well.

2002–Present

Whatever other impacts it had, 9/11 turned out to be a huge bonanza for Pakistan’shigher education system. General Pervez Musharraf, who had seized power 2 yearsearlier, deftly used the opportunity to drop Pakistan’s earlier support for the AfghanTaliban and join America’s war against terror. Western governments assumed thatterror nodes existed in Pakistan because of a dysfunctional educational system.Mainstreaming Pakistani madrassas was a top priority for them because it wasfrom here that the Taliban had sprung. Suspicious of Western motives, madrassasrefused to mainstream but the university system welcomed the infusion of cash.

High Growth Phase

On 11 September 2002 – a full year after the attack on the World Trade Centre inNew York – Gen. Musharraf signed a presidential ordinance devolving the UGC. Itwould henceforth function as the Higher Education Commission with Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, a chemist holding a PhD from the University of Cambridge, as the firstHEC chairman. The HEC’s mandate included but went beyond that of the nowdefunct UGC’s. Additionally, the HEC was tasked with formulating higher educa-tion policy, creating new universities and teacher training institutions, providingresearch grants and scholarships for overseas studies, and monitoring quality. Unlikethe UGC, HEC was free to take decisions independently of the Ministry of Education(MOE) which was seen as saddled with bureaucratic lethargy.

Table 6 shows the rupee amount given to the HEC by the Ministry of Finance.This is not quite consistent with those of the World Bank according to which totalspending (recurrent + development) by the HEC grew by 344% in real termsbetween 2002 and 2005/2006. But whichever set of figures one takes, these probablyset some kind of a world record for rapid growth (Higher Education Policy Note:Pakistan an assessment of the medium-term development framework, Document of

18 P. Hoodbhoy

the World Bank, 28 June 2006). Rahman broke with the earlier system of time-boundpromotions where publication requirements were minimal. The new HEC policybecame strictly numerical: the academic worth of a university teacher was hence-forth to be judged by the number of published research papers, patents obtained, andnumber of PhD theses supervised.

Economic Survey, Ministry of Finance

New rules were put in place for faculty hiring and salaries: the Tenure Track System(TTS) with salary scales that were 2–3 times that in the earlier Basic Pay System(BPS) was initiated. Spending priorities included the purchase and maintenance ofscientific equipment, funding overseas visits, paying for meetings, and supportingproject grants. A foreign faculty program was started and hundreds of academicsfrom overseas spent anywhere from a few weeks up to 2–3 years at Pakistaniuniversities with their salaries and travel covered by the HEC.

It all seemed to make sense. For 60 years teachers had complained of low salaries,absence of supplies in their laboratories, inability to order books and journals, and agenerally poor infrastructure. Their low teaching standard was ascribed to their beingunderpaid which forced them to moonlight in other institutions or take on tuitionstudents. Building maintenance, library additions, equipment repair, teachers’ sala-ries, student stipends – everything needed money. Not having this was the reasongiven earlier for the meagre output of research publications by Pakistani authors.Only the occasional supervisor would take on a PhD student, and candidates werefew as well. Travel grants for overseas research trips or attending conferences wasonly infrequently funded by the UGC.

The “PhD deficit” was seen as the greatest reason for alarm. There is no reliablecount of numbers of PhDs produced by Pakistani universities prior to around 2006–2007 but an article written by the HEC chairman in 2005 refers to an annualproduction rate of 250 PhDs per annum (Dr. Atta-Ur-Rahman, Dawn, 7 April,2005). This was different from that in an interview given less than a year earlier(Dawn, 20 June 2004) where he gave this number as around 200. In various otherspeeches, that number fluctuated between 50 and 250. In an earlier article he wrote:“During the forty years between 1947 and 1986, only 128 PhDs were produced inthe sciences in Pakistan. This amounts to 3 PhDs per year (this is not per university

Table 6 HEC budget over time. (Source: Pakistan)

Year Grant (million rupees)

2002–2003 92.8

2003–2004 458.0

2004–2005 901.3

2005–2006 1501.6

2006–2007 1954.4

2007–2008 2085.4

Pakistan’s Higher Education System 19

but the sum output of all universities and research organizations). In 1996, Pakistanproduced about 48–50 PhD’s in science” (Atta-Ur-Rahman and Iqbal Choudhury1998).

Provided with large financial incentives, university professors now began pro-ducing PhDs at an accelerated rate and the number of research papers publishedannually increased dramatically. Advised by Dr. Rahman, General Musharrafdeclared that the annual production of Ph.D. degree holders would be boostedfrom 150 per year to 1500 per year (Aim to have 1500 PHDs every year: Atta-Ur-Rahman, Dawn, 20 June 2004). Table 7 shows that this was indeed put into practice.

Publication counts of PhD students soared. At most US universities, it is rare for adoctoral student to publish more than 2–5 papers based upon his dissertation work.But, given that publications would be financially rewarded almost instantly, the mostproductive ones under Rahman’s scheme easily clocked up 10–20 papers. By thetime they graduated, some had more papers than a full professor in the 1970s at thesame university might have published over his lifetime.

As graphs hurtled upwards, the foreign press supported Rahman’s claim ofhaving spawned an education revolution in an unlikely country. The World Bankwrote glowing reports (ibid.) and various international university ranking organiza-tions rushed to provide supportive numerical data. There was unqualified praise fromoverseas education analysts. One wrote:

Since 2002 a number of extraordinary changes have taken place. . . Its [HEC’s] successeshave been remarkable. . .the commission’s successes in obtaining funding resulted in criti-cism from several other ministries that did not fare as well and in jealousy about itsachievements and autonomy. . .Quality had increased significantly, and several institutionswere on their way to becoming world-class institutions. (Hayward 2009)

A few Pakistani universities were pushed into the top 500 global ranking. Nationalpride swelled and there was jubilation after Thomson Reuter’s 2016 report.According to this Canada-based multinational media firm:

In the last decade, Pakistan’s scientific research productivity has increased by more than 4times, from approximately 2000 articles per year in 2006 to more than 9000 articles in 2015.

Table 7 Number of PhD degrees awarded by public and private universities

Year Public Private

2006 408 –

2007 438 –

2008 628 –

2009 779 –

2010 775 57

2011 952 72

2012 1038 80

2013 1142 69

2014 1248 103

20 P. Hoodbhoy

During this time, the number of Highly Cited Papers (HCPs) featuring Pakistan basedauthors increased tenfold from 9 articles in 2006 to 98 in 2015. (Thomson Reuters: AnotherBric in the wall: Pakistan vs Bric Countries – scientific influence and citation impact report.http://ip-science.interest.thomsonreuters.com/incites-pakistan/)

The Thomson Reuter report put Pakistan “well ahead of Brazil, Russia, India, andChina in terms of HCPs.” Citations are an acknowledgement by other researchers ofimportant research or useful new findings. The more citations a researcher earns, themore impact he/she is supposed to have had upon that field.

Those on the ground were puzzled by the announcement. A fourfold increase inscientific productivity should surely be accompanied by some visible indicators –busier science laboratories, more frequent seminars presenting new results, animateddiscussions on scientific topics, etc. It was also troubling that when tested byinternational metrics, most graduating students demonstrated inadequate compre-hension of subject knowledge. A concrete example: The Graduate Record Exami-nation administered by the Education Testing Service, Princeton, is a requirement foradmission into the upper tier of US universities. In 2006, the GRE subject test wasofficially declared mandatory by the HEC for obtaining admission into a PhDprogram in Pakistani universities. Later, under the pressure of students and theirsupervisors, this condition was withdrawn in 2010. At Quaid-e-Azam University’sphysics department – which insisted on maintaining quality – this was set as a PhDgraduation requirement. As a compromise with those who thought the test would betoo difficult, pass marks were set at a low 40 percentile.

The situation with medical universities – whose numbers had soared alongsideothers – is also far from satisfactory. Although Pakistan’s top 5–6 medical univer-sities are considered to be in the range from good to adequate, the quality of theremainder is said to be alarming. In the beginning of August 2019, led by SaudiArabia, certain Gulf countries such as Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates,ended job contracts of Pakistani doctors holding medical research degrees such asMaster of Surgery (MS) and Doctor of Medicine (MD).

Saudi Arabia, which had decided to invest heavily in clinical research, faced a new problemnear the end of 2017. Hospitals started receiving complaints from multinational pharmaceu-tical companies that certain medical researchers were incapable of handling patient’s spec-imens, conducting drug trials, and diversifying research as per the given disease and patient.Further, medical researchers were even incompetent at identifying and applying a correctresearch method and writing a research paper, either for inviting grants or for publication.Hospitals conveyed these multiple complaints to the Saudi Health Ministry. In 2018, theSaudi Health Ministry conducted an inquiry into the matter and found out that mostcomplaints were related to the MS and MD degree holder doctors (clinical researchers)from Pakistan. (Mehmood 2019)

The free reign given to private medical colleges, and the upgrading of medicalcolleges to medical universities, appears to have severely impacted basic medicaltraining.

As the final comment on HE quality, we take the number of students studying inthe United States as an indicator. US colleges and universities, unlike those in

Pakistan’s Higher Education System 21

Europe or China, have a more rigorous system both for admitting students and forassessing them. A particularly important measure is the number of students admittedinto graduate programs. Table 8 below is therefore revealing:

International Rankings

The disconnection between local perceptions of education quality and that of foreigncommentators underlies a crucial issue, that of an adequate metric. By and large thisis uncritically taken from the ranking ascribed to Pakistani universities by overseascommercial organizations based in the United States, Europe, and China. About adozen or so such organizations purport to rank universities by academic quality.What comes out is seriously misleading (Hoodbhoy 2016b).

From some distant office, a handful of employees pass judgement on hundreds –perhaps thousands – of universities they have never visited. Instead they fire offforms hoping that university officials will fill them truthfully. The websites of thesebusinesses say nothing of how their own expenses and salaries are met. Unlessconfronted, they do not reveal that they have service contracts with some of theuniversities they evaluate. Yet their published rankings are still taken with serious-ness by prospective students and their parents, as well as by private and governmentagencies in deciding policies and grant distributions. For-profit foreign organizationsoperating from afar have no way to assess local situations or tell fake data from real.Example: according to the 2019 Shanghai List (Academic Ranking of World Uni-versities, Shanghai Rankings), the mechanical engineering department at Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) ranks just below Pennsylvania State University and justabove Ohio State University. This was a few notches down from 2018 when QAUstood just below Cornell University. The problem: QAU’s website lists no engineer-ing departments at all!

The very idea of ranking universities is questionable. UNESCO’s 2010 reportstates: “Global university rankings fail to capture either the meaning or diversequalities of a university or the characteristics of universities in a way that valuesand respects their educational and social purposes, missions and goals. At present,these rankings are of dubious value, are underpinned by questionable social science,

Table 8 Students studying in the United States in undergraduate and graduate programs forcountries in the region (Institute of International Education 2018)

Country

2012/2013 2017/2018

Undergrad Graduate Undergrad Graduate

Pakistan 2001 1916 3429 2755

India 12,740 54,607 23,346 95,651

Bangladesh 1027 2349 1766 4649

Iran 549 7157 808 9695

China 93,789 103,505 148,593 130,843

22 P. Hoodbhoy

arbitrarily privilege particular indicators, and use shallow proxies as correlates ofquality. p. no?”

Individuals and institutions have a propensity for turning reality on its head bymanipulating numbers. Research evaluations, through multiple pathways, count for50–70% of a university’s ranking (if not more) but are easily doctored. The rise ofthe Paper King is one glaring manifestation. A new breed of Internet-age universityteacher has emerged on campuses in several countries – particularly in corruptionprone ones. He is surrounded by junior teachers, PhD students, and assortedflunkeys. University administrations woo him because they know he knows howto get the attention of ranking organizations (Hoodbhoy 2017).

The Paper King rose to his throne for good reason. He can generate countlessresearch papers without doing real, hard research. Instead, he has mastered severalsteps: selective cut and paste, choosing research topics of low relevance andnoticeability, trivially changing parameters, inventing data, or plagiarizing ideas.Suitably selecting or manipulating a journal means publication is a cinch. Refereeingexists only in name. Some kings become editor-in-chief; others start their own boguson-line journals. From Paper King to HCA (Highly Cited Author) is then a shortjourney. The king in Islamabad reaches out to friendly kingdoms everywhere fromJakarta to Shanghai, and Teheran to Nairobi. He cites their papers and they dulyreturn his favor, a win-win situation. The king’s citation count rockets upward.

Of course, a university is about more than research – there’s also teaching. Sowhy not judge by teaching quality? Unfortunately, even with intimate knowledge,judging teaching within a single department of a single university is notoriouslydifficult. It is plagued by subjectivity, and by the very limited direct personalexperiences of those called upon to assess teaching performance. In conclusion,quality ranking as presently carried is seriously problematic and provides no reliableguidance.

The Balance Sheet

In 2009, Nature ran an editorial “Cash Costs –Massive funding for Pakistan’s ailinguniversities holds many lessons for other developing nations” (Nature 461, 11–12, 9September 2009). It noted that: “Sudden surges of cash are held to be dangerous inpoorer countries, which often lack the institutions or the calibre of people required tomake the most of such a windfall, and the money can easily be wasted or fall prey tocorruption.”

Although not backed with supportive examples, the editorial was correct in spirit.Even from afar it was becoming clear that earlier promises were not being met. Theunchecked experimentation finally came to an end after Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman wasreplaced by the incoming government (2008–2013) of Asif Ali Zardari. The changeof government put paid to the HEC’s massive publicity blitzes with huge newspaperadvertisements and colored multi-page supplements devoted to breathless self-pro-motion of HEC, its leadership, and its projects.

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A researched article, “In Pakistan, the Problems That Money Can Bring,” waspublished in the January 2007 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. It notedthat the failure of the HEC to create and adequately implement rules has caused anexplosion of substandard universities, fake and substandard degrees, meaninglessresearch publications, and a massive wave of unpunished plagiarized academicpapers. Scientific equipment was imported carelessly and at whim; the Pelletron –a 400 million rupee particle accelerator machine was imported against the strenuousopposition of Pakistan’s most accomplished and decorated nuclear physicist at thetime, Prof. Riazuddin (Hoodbhoy 2013) as well as this author. We lost the fight.Fifteen years later, the machine lies abandoned with little significant use ever havingbeen made of it.

But there was still more grand folly in the works: among the government’s mostexpensive projects were the nine new engineering universities at a cost of $4.3billion, to be spread across the country. Officially associated with France, Sweden,Italy, Austria, Germany, Japan, as well as other countries, these universities weresupposed to meet the acute shortage in Pakistan of international quality engineeringeducation. But the basic ingredients for success were not there. Prepared on the basisof a skimpy two-page “concept paper,” no proper feasibility study had been done bythe Planning Commission of Pakistan. Hundreds of millions were spent but thescheme was eventually abandoned and not a single university was ever built. Thetsunami had passed.

A 2018 report commissioned by the British Council essentially corroborates thenegative effects coming from pressure to publish upon faculty tenure and promotion,concluding that:

Faculty in Pakistan view research as an activity that has, at its principal end, journalpublication as a requirement for career advancement. Many faculty members across Pakistanfeel that research is treated as a ‘numbers game’ in which quantity is incentivised overquality, and faculty discourse by and large misses the spirit of enquiry and debate, thepassion to solve globally or locally meaningful problems, and the frictional camaraderie ofbelonging to communities of practice. (The University Research System in Pakistan – AKnowledge Platform Project in Collaboration with the British Council in Pakistan, 2018)

Against all these negatives stands the fact that access to higher education had indeedrisen dramatically. New universities had been built, some even in tribal areas lackingany semblance of academic tradition. Whatever the quality of instruction in cities,these would be a big step still lower. So, what would be gained by adding on stillmore universities?

The same question can be asked about primary and secondary schools which,even if of low quality, still offer something of high social value. An educationist whostarts from the assumption that most Pakistani middle and high schools today aresubstandard and that they teach wrong things nevertheless says we need more, notless, schools. She notes that: “The number one reason we must commit to givingchildren a school experience is because it offers them the chance to participate in apeer community, and this informs a necessary part of their mental, emotional,cognitive and social growth. This couldn’t be truer in the Pakistani context, where

24 P. Hoodbhoy

even in the most rundown schools, provided there is a boundary wall, a group ofchildren comes together for hours at a stretch” (Siddiqui 2019).

A similar argument can be made for setting up universities and colleges in markettowns or tribal areas with low literacy and no academic traditions. It also applies touniversities set up by the military (NUST, Bahria, Air, etc.) where a strict regimenapplies. Of course, these institutions may be better described as cargo universities (ala Feynman). Nevertheless, they do serve an important social purpose. For the ruraland urban youth – whose numbers are exploding – they offer upward mobility and achance to interface with the modern world. There is value to routine: classes, tests,examinations, graduations, and a chance to meet young people outside your imme-diate environment. For young women who otherwise would never experience a lifeoutside their homes, this is particularly important. In spite of multiple taboos andrestrictions, they do succeed meeting young men. And so, yes, more is better.

To conclude: the excesses of the Rahman-Musharraf era appear to have beenrecognized now, even if only partially. A new HEC chairman appointed in 2018 hasviews that seem influenced by his US education wherein a strong bachelor’s leveleducation is foundational. He has outlined his flagship initiative – that of concen-trating the bulk of HEC’s resources into widening and strengthening undergraduateteaching across Pakistan. Every eligible student, he says, should be able to obtain a4-year BS degree irrespective of income or region. Crucially, this should be suffi-ciently useful in itself and thus be regarded as a terminal degree rather than being justthe first rung up the PhD ladder. Though slow, there surely has been some learning.

Contemporary Issues

In this section we first take up the elusive question of quality – what could itsindicators possibly be, and to what degree is quality quantifiable. Thereafter, thenexus between terrorism and higher education is examined; a surprising develop-ment that could not have been anticipated until fairly recently. Understanding thisshall lead us into a discussion of campus culture and academic freedom.

The Quality Conundrum

As the low quality of university education came in for some public criticism in2005–2006, the HEC decided to establish new Quality Enhancement Cells (QEC)and Independent Quality Assurance (IQA) mechanism in Higher Education Institu-tions (HEIs). Quality would henceforth be expressed in numbers: “To reinforce itsobjective, IQA holds periodic Progress review meetings and perform monitoringvisits. The quality of IQA mechanism in an HEI is measured quantitatively, onannual basis, by means of a score card. The assessment period starts from first of Julyeach year and ends on 30th of June next year” (https://www.hec.gov.pk/english/services/universities/QAA/InternalQA/Pages/default.aspx). The code words were all

Pakistan’s Higher Education System 25

there: notifications were sent to universities announcing hiring for QEC posts. Largenumbers of job seekers immediately lined up.

In August 2006, a 45-page self-assessment manual patterned on the ISO (Inter-national Standards Organization) was agreed upon by a 12-member committee ofvice-chancellors and HEC senior officials and sent to all universities, public andprivate. It is a model of prevarication and intellectual bankruptcy. Unfortunately, themanual was padded with personal CVs of committee members, questionnaires, andelaborate flowcharts and looping diagrams. Other than providing employment, it ishard to see what was gained from the setting up of QECs or IQAs.

But this leaves begging the key question: what is an approximate measure ofuniversity quality? When it is said that University X is better than University Y butnot quite as good as University Z, a scale is implied much as in the measurement of aphysical quantity like length. The challenge is to find a way of setting the scale andintroduce a partial measure of objectivity. Any meaningful determination of univer-sity quality must grapple with the following questions, all of which are difficult andelude precise quantification. Nonetheless, the core of “quality” education lies in thefollowing:

1. Adequacy of subject knowledge by faculty who teach courses at the college oruniversity level: Formal requirements such as a PhD cannot be relied uponbecause most teachers have come up through a system that has progressivelydeteriorated and is heavily memory based. Eventually possessors of PhD degreescome to occupy positions of chairmen, deans, and vice-chancellors. Externalyardsticks become crucial in arresting further decline.

2. Critical thinking: In traditional society this is frowned upon as a challenge to theexisting order but modern society has little use for graduates who cannot think forthemselves. Much of the student body in all universities except the very best onesis rendered deliberately passive. The idea that asking questions in class is a virtuerather than punishable offence must be actively promoted.

3. Academic meritocracy: Universities in seventeenth century Europe could pro-duce towering academics only because the liberal ideal was to create a meritoc-racy. This led to self-governing communities of scholars engaged in free inquiry,discovery, and transmission of knowledge. Such a situation is possible whenethnicity, religious sect, class, political views, and personal relationships do notenter into faculty or student selection and promotion. Else the academic environ-ment is poisoned. Successful creation of a meritocracy depends upon whether theselection process is seen as fair and just, or otherwise. It is one manifestation ofwhat sociologist Francis Fukuyama of Stanford calls “trust capital.” Trust permitscreating a spirit of collegiality among teachers that allows them to work togetherdeveloping course contents, workloads, scheduling, etc. Collegial trust is builtupon giving scholarly achievement its due and absorbing the virtues of honesty,rigor, correctness, originality, and cooperation. It is retained and enhanced whenproof of a serious academic crime (plagiarism, fakery, cheating in examinations,etc.) committed by a faculty member or student results in uniform punishment

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without interference by factors external to the university (courts, politicians, localpower brokers).

4. Academic freedom: The liberal ideal is that universities must serve truth andknowledge in contrast to the former Soviet or Chinese models, the latter beingpurely utilitarian. Liberal notions inevitably collide against tradition and author-itarianism – and Pakistan has seen its share of the latter. Over seven decades therehave been periods of greater and lesser restriction. Academic freedom continuesto be considered a borrowed term in Pakistan, similar to the much-derided term“freedom of speech.” It has not been preached as a virtue even by elected,democratic governments and finds no mention on the HEC website.

5. Research: Modern universities treasure critical inquiry leading to research, theresults of which are published in journals that exercise rigorous standards ofscholarship. Citations of published work by other scholars provide the mostimportant estimation of an individual scholar’s achievement in research. Butwhen the need to publish is the dominant motivation, and when an individual’scomprehension of the subject is insufficient, what emerges is spam. PrivatelyHEC officials will concede this, but to meaningfully change this would requirefighting an entrenched professor mafia (Hoodbhoy 2017).

This leaves form but not much substance. Graduation mortar boards and gownsaside, the real question remains: what has been the value added when teachers appearto teach but actually only repeat what’s in the book or notes, research is mostly aboutproducing look-alike fakeries, and the only organizations permitted on campus arethose representing some ethnic or sectarian interest.

One measure of how seriously studies at a university are taken is given by thenumber of days per year that they are actually open for classes and exams. Privateuniversities certainly do better than public ones in this regard – parents and studentswant value for their money. The performance of many public universities in thisregard is poor. Classes are generally held from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, 5 days a week.This leaves classrooms empty most of the day but far more serious are periodicinterruptions. Over some 45 years, Quaid-e-Azam University is estimated to haveclosed down two or three dozen times, each time for a period of a week or more.QAU is Pakistan’s only public federal university and also its flagship. In 1997, it hadshut down totally for an entire semester because teachers were demanding a part ofthe university’s land to be handed over to them as their private property. Lost time inpublic universities generally comes also from shutdowns due to political agitation,teacher or student strikes, extra days of unofficial absence before and after the twoEids, VIP movements, etc. At a rough guess, lost time is one third of the total in mostpublic universities. Private universities have significantly less down time.

The semi-serious approach to university studies can be contrasted with thatelsewhere. Ever since opening its doors to students in 1160, the University ofParis has closed only thrice – in 1226, 1940 (German invasion), and 1968 (studentagitations). The University of Oxford, established 1096, has temporarily closed onlytwice, once in 1209 for the town execution of two scholars and in 1355 during a riot.

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The bottom line: boiler plate approaches to the question of university quality –like that of the World Bank and its army of education experts (Higher EducationPolicy Note, op cit.) – can lead to an entirely spurious understanding and hence toactions that lead away from solutions rather than towards them. A ground-basedexploration and proper criteria are badly wanting but as yet education experts seemunwilling to take up the challenge.

University-Extremism Nexus

Terrorist attacks by university educated young men and women have repeatedlygrabbed national attention in the last decade, breaking the myth that only theuneducated can be recruited into terrorism. Local newspapers have carried manystories of young killers, including those from affluent middle-class families. Islamicgroups such as Daesh and Hizb-ut-Tahrir successfully recruit young fanatics. Uni-versity graduates have planned and executed murders as well as gruesome massacressuch as those at Safoora Goth (Sind High Court refuses to revoke death sentence ofaccused in Safoora Goth massacre, Pakistan Today, 11 February 2019) and ParadeLane mosque (Universities move to counter trends of extremism, militancy instudents, Dawn, 06 September, 2017). Universities are unwilling to take any partof the blame: after a campus-based terror group had killed several policemen and aretired army colonel, Karachi University’s vice-chancellor and faculty were unani-mous that terrorism is the security agencies headache, not theirs (Ayub 2017).

In 2017, while addressing a meeting on “The Role of Youth in Rejecting Terrorism,”the Chief of Army Staff, General Bajwa, demanded “cleansing these barbarians fromtheir potholes” (APP Report, 18 May 2017, https://www.app.com.pk/cleansing-barbarians-from-their-potholes-an-example-in-world-coas/). The HEC’s response to thisdemand was rather tepid. It resolved to establish a “Directorate of Students” withinuniversities so that challenges faced by “students and staff would be registered,analyzed and resolved.” Extracurricular activities – football and cricket chiefly –were recommended in the hope that these would keep students away from guns andbombs (APP Report, 18 September 2017, HEC devising mechanism to curb intoler-ance, extremism in varsities, https://nation.com.pk/18-Sep-2017/hec-devising-mechanism-to-curb-intolerance-extremism-in-varsities). No further action circulars weresent out subsequently.

A more serious analysis would assign the following causes:First: the activist preacher-professor. He wields authority over captive student

audiences and broadcasts his message inside classes and outside. According tostudents, some begin class with long prayer recitations, turn briefly to whatevertechnical subject they are paid to teach, and then return to proselytizing. The moreorthodox male teachers refuse to address questions from female students. Some-times, certain radical websites and Facebook pages are suggested as follow-ups toclass discussions. On a fairly regular basis, selected “motivational” guest speakersare brought onto campus by jihadist professors with support from sympatheticuniversity administrators.

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Second: the blurred boundary between religious devotion and religious radical-ism. The case of Ansarul Sharia Pakistan is one example. The organization’s namebespeaks its goal – that to make Pakistan a sharia state. Although deemed terroristbecause of its attacks on civilians and security forces, ASP shares this objective notjust with banned organizations like TTP, Al-Qaida, and Da’ish but also with legalparliamentary parties such as JUI and JI. Indeed, a PEW survey showed 86% ofyoung Pakistanis want sharia (“Chap. 1: Beliefs About Sharia.” Pew ResearchCenter’s Religion & Public Life Project. 2013-04-30).

Third: depoliticization of students and their reduction to apathy. Student unions,which once provided a forum for discussing political and social issues, have beenbanned for nearly 40 years. Only ethnic and religious student councils are allowed, atleast in public universities. These restrictions have not only voided political dis-course on campus, they have also added years to when a student is consideredmature. Teachers invariably refer to students (who may be 20+ years old) as bachas(kids, not fully responsible adults), but equally students also refer to their colleaguesas bachas. Maturity for women comes only after marriage. For men, after they get ajob and settle into life.

Culturally deprived young Pakistanis are desperate for joy and freedom. They areable to find this in some top-class universities but occasionally a public one as well.It is much less where the impact of the Taliban has been large, as in KPK andBalochistan. One hears students from Islamia College (Peshawar) speak wistfully ofa Peshawar that their generation has never known – that’s when there were cinemas,sports galas, fun fairs, and declamation contests. Doctors from the nearby KhyberMedical College (both females and males) could once set up a fun fair on campus.Yes, there were music events, theaters, colors, and poetry. Even dancing!

Academic Freedom

The modern university midwifed Europe’s transition from medievalism to moder-nity. Even in the darkest of times, and often under the gaze of a frowning church,these ivory towers pursued free and unfettered inquiry. Their traditions of empiricalanalysis and critical thought created dynamic societies.

Traditional society has no place for academic freedom and most universityadministrations disdain it. In a nutshell here is how they think: Academic freedomis a malicious Western invention for corrupting minds, wasting time, and destroyingdiscipline; Politics has no place on campus and Gen Zia did well to ban studentunions; Coeducation is a bad idea that invites immorality onto campus and should bebanned or, at the very least, a strict dress code applied. Comparative religions neednot be studied at any Pakistani university because we have the best possible religion.Music is not worth studying academically and is probably forbidden by Islam anyway.

Policing is not always done by the university administration or intelligence agents– students are often willing volunteers. This is unsurprising. Most grew up in anauthoritarian environment and were never exposed to genuine debate. Open

Pakistan’s Higher Education System 29

discussion of any large issue inside the classroom happens very rarely. Forbiddentopics include the nature of religious belief, any aspect of the blasphemy law,anything considered critical of the Pakistan Army and its commercial operationsor its past wars with India. Baloch complaints, the Pakhtun Tahaffuz Mahaz, nuclearweapon policy, and CPEC require wandering into forbidden territory. Human evo-lution and aspects of human sexuality must be handled in roundabout terms.

The list of progressive students and teachers who have fought such suffocation istragically long. To name but a few: Dr. Khalid Hameed, professor of English atBahawalpur University, stabbed to death by a fanatical student for organizing agender mixed farewell party with a traditional jhoomar dance; Mishal Khan, lynchedby fellow students at AWK University on a false blasphemy allegation; JunaidHafeez aged 29, the once-young brilliant lecturer at BZ University has spent hislast 7 years in solitary confinement in Multan jail as he awaits trial for blasphemy.The actual list is much longer.

Punjab University – Pakistan’s oldest university – is where ideological conser-vatism finds direct expression. Here the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba has dominatedstudent politics for over 50 years. Anti-vice squads prowl the campus searchingfor couples holding hands or engaged in other such “immoral” acts. In past yearsthey forced the closure of the music department, and ended dance and life drawingclasses. Valentine’s Day celebrations are strictly forbidden. Many murders have beenascribed to this group but they remain firmly in power. No vice chancellor has beenable to defeat the IJT. Elsewhere, it is common for university administrators totightly regulate students. Some universities – UET (Lahore) and Bahria University(Islamabad) – officially imposed the head scarf upon female students. But mostinstitutions need not because students self-conform.

Art and architecture universities (NCA, IVAA, BNU), where students derive fromthe upper-middle class, are far more permissive. To this one could add a handful ofpublic and private universities. From time to time they host rock concerts, male andfemale students freely intermingle, burqa-less students are aplenty, and students askquestions in class. The ambience would be considered normal elsewhere; in Paki-stan, these are oases of personal freedom. Such universities are prohibitively expen-sive for most students. Public universities generally cost $3000–4000 per year whilethe top end ones would be 3–4 times as costly.

Summary and Conclusions

This chapter began with the state of Muslim education in colonial India; moved tothe expansion of Pakistan’s university system in subsequent decades; described andanalyzed its rapid growth after 9/11; challenged conventional metrics for determin-ing university quality; explained the nexus between terrorism and universities; andexplored the current limits on personal and academic freedom.

30 P. Hoodbhoy

Left incomplete and hanging was the question: what’s a world-class university allabout?

Let’s for a moment let the imagination soar. Here’s what an ideal universityshould be: a bastion of critical inquiry into the natural world and human affairs; apower house of ideas and techniques for generating new technologies; an institutionfor utilitarian ends that trains professionals of every kind; and a fountainhead fromwhich springs a model citizenry capable of responsible and reasoned decision-making. Ideally its graduates can think independently and scientifically, have anunderstanding of history and culture, can create discourses on social and politicalissues, and are capable of coherent expression in speech and writing.

No university in the world comes close to this. Belonging to the realm of Platonicforms, the ideal university is an abstraction never to be realized. Nevertheless, it doesgive us a measure and metric to judge where we stand in relation to the ideal. Can weever have perfect education? This can only exist in a perfect society. But, on the otherhand, every educational system derives from the cultural ethos and relations ofpower prevalent in that society. One therefore reverts to the chicken-and-egg prob-lem; problems prevalent in the society at large are inevitably reflected in how iteducates its young. Hope lies entirely with the new generation of Pakistanis beingbetter educated and more aware than the ones preceding them.

Cross-References

▶Colonial Education and the Modern Subject▶ Pakistan▶ Perspectives on the History of Colonial Education▶ South Asian Islamic Education in the Pre-Colonial, Colonial, and PostcolonialPeriods

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