Academic responsibility

The govt should set up a commission to make recommendations on remedial measures for the higher education sector.

The discussion about threats to academic freedom became noticeable some time after Ayub Khan established the first military dictatorship in Pakistan though the Rawalpindi conspiracy case and widespread suppression of left-wing intellectuals including Faiz Ahmad Faiz, in and outside academia, took place. The leitmotif of this early debate was that the state –– driven by the vested interests of its ruling elite and by its need to screen unpopular foreign alliances –– constrains the freedom of thought and action of intellectual constituencies. There has also been concern about intimidation from extremist religious groups that do not tolerate diversity of opinion. In Karachi’s intellectual culture, a particular political party has often been accused of using terror against those opposed to its ethnic agenda.

Sadly enough, sacrosanct principles of the autonomy, self-regulation and pluralism of the academic world are now being undermined in Pakistan by certain endogenous practices. As some renowned academics point out, there is erosion of integrity in academia. What invests this unease with urgency is the creeping disenchantment with the principal institution charged with the maintenance of high standards and norms, namely, the Higher education Commission (HEC).

Some academics are already talking of the need to limit the HEC’s role to more or less the same as once belonged to the old fashioned University Grants Commission and supplant it by a higher statutory body for the direction and oversight of higher education. An increase in regulatory mechanisms would inevitably be intrusive, rules-driven and restrictive of space for academic freedom. But just as a nose dive in law and order has led to ever increasing arbitrary powers for the coercive apparatus of the state, the academic world may well have to pay this price.

Several things have gone wrong after the planners woke up to the yawning gap between the ‘output’ of our universities and that of the other middle order nations. Apart from dilution of quality during indiscriminate expansion, there is a conspicuous lack of intellectual probity and honesty. As head of the largest think-tank in Islamabad for three years, I was dismayed by the demise of the culture of book reading, heavy desk-bound reliance on material instantly accessible from Google and, even more depressingly, recourse to plagiarism amongst researchers otherwise selected on merit. When challenged, their usual alibi was their ‘training’ at premier universities under teachers who had no issue with these ingrained habits. This is a clear abdication of academic responsibility rooted in the compulsion of university departments, and in turn of the universities themselves, to produce impressive statistics that get translated into grants and appropriations. In our larger social and political milieu, the dominant trend is trivialisation of norms and the academic community is not doing enough to immune itself from it.

Several academics are struggling hard and in the process generating a sharp debate with the HEC, to save the idea of a university and preserve at least minimum standards of research in sciences and social sciences. Universities represent the apex of a nation’s spiritual, cultural and intellectual life. They transmit and create knowledge. They are the main instruments of planned and orderly change that enables communities to keep pace with time. Modern societies are heavily dependent on excellence and achievement in higher education, particularly in science and technology. It is, therefore, natural that its practical functions receive special emphasis. But higher education is equally vital for objectives and purposes which are not directly related to economic progress but which are good in themselves and which lead to enrichment of life, be it individual or collective.

The choice today is stark: we can demand a much higher quality of performance from the existing HEC, or think of more watchdogs. Prudence requires that the government sets up a special commission to make recommendations on remedial measures after an intensive investigation of the state of higher education. Needless to say, academic leaders should have a key, though not exclusive, role in this process.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 2^nd, 2012.