The writer is a former federal minister for science and technology and served as Chairman of the Higher Education Commission from 2002-08
After careful evaluation of the higher education sector, Professor Michael Rode, chairman of the United Nations Commission on Science, Technology and Development, wrote in 2008: “Never before have I seen such rapid positive changes in any country in the higher education sector as witnessed in Pakistan in a short period of six years. Around the world when we discuss the status of higher education in different countries, there is unanimity of opinion that the developing country that has made the most rapid progress internationally in recent years is Pakistan ... . The United Nations Commission on Science and Technology has closely monitored the development in Pakistan in the past years, coming to the unanimous conclusion that (the) policy and programme is a ‘best-practice’ example for developing countries aiming at building their human resources and establishing an innovative, technology-based economy.”
An independent senior US educational expert, Professor Fred Hayward, after careful analysis of this sector on behalf of USAID wrote: “Since 2002, a number of extraordinary changes have taken place. The HEC instituted major upgrades for laboratories and information and communications technology, rehabilitation of facilities, expansion of research support, and development of one of the best digital libraries in the region. Its successes have been remarkable.”
The claims of Mr Hoodbhoy that plagiarism was promoted by the policies of the HEC are sheer nonsense. Admittedly, there were a few stray cases of ‘cut and paste’ research articles (plagiarism) but the HEC acted swiftly to put a stop to it. To generalise and make sweeping criticisms on the basis of a couple of happenings is wrong. Indeed Pakistan is probably the only country with a nationwide system in operation to detect cheating in research papers. A software (‘ithenticate’/ ‘turnitin’) was introduced in every university to check the theses and research papers regarding any illegally copied materials. A watchdog unit was also established within the HEC, and out of the 14,000 international research publications during 2011 and 2012, no cases of plagiarism were detected. In order to enhance the quality of teaching and research, about 84 quality assurance cells were established in all public sector universities.
Today, six of our universities are ranked among the top 500 of the world. During 1947-2003, prior to the establishment of the HEC, not a single university could achieve this distinction. In 2012, About 8,000 research papers were published from Pakistan, overtaking India in terms of research output per million population — a historic achievement.
In the final analysis, it is the views of neutral external experts who have carried out peer reviews of our higher education system and documented them in comprehensive and voluminous reports about remarkable changes in the landscape of higher education in Pakistan that must be believed rather than the maverick views of Mr Hoodbhoy whose contract at LUMS was not renewed because of his lack of performance and productivity.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 11th, 2013.
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we can guess the ability of Mr Atta ur Rehman from the link, which he has given as a reference for including Pakistani universities among top 500 universities of the world. Atleast give us an authenticated website which is reliable.
Khatta Ur Rahman wrote: "In 2012, About 8,000 research papers were published from Pakistan, overtaking India in terms of research output per million population — a historic achievement."
See: Scientific Paper Trail Infographic, Thomson Reuters/Essential Science Indicators at: http://www.nature.com/news/366-days-2012-in-review-1.12042
It's not the number of publications, as Khatta likes to tout, but the citation rankings that matter - and Pakistan doesn't feature on a map that factors it in. India does. Quality, Khatta, not quantity.
Dr, Atta ur Rehman is all over in this rejoinder, the counter narrative of Dr, Atta to Pervaiz Hoodbhoy doesn't make sense and hence simply unable to respond hoodbhoy criticism. I can myself prove to atta ur rehamn that the software in HEC disposal to check plagiarism are totally ineffective. The reality is plagiarism, fake data and repetition has been the hallmark of so called university researcher.
I do agree, this is a number game. All the awards mentioned by Dr. Atta ur Rahman are earned due to his personal efforts and links only. Now due to contribution of Dr. Atta ur Rahman it is easy to earn a fake degree from a private as well as public sector university. I know a number of officers at HEC and CIIT who have obtained degrees with out attending a class.
@socko
You are right my friend, but Dr. Atta is also Ph.D from Cambridge. Both are highly educated.
Sour grapes Ata. Do you really think using the words "senior US educational expert" is supposed to instill respect or admiration? It's like saying a US expert called Greg Mortensen knows more about primary schools in Pakistan than Pakistanis.
@Awais: Now I understand why there is a problem in PAK. Critical analysis is lacking !
@John B:
I think the article first describes all the steps taken to ensure the quality of research work before getting into the numeral statistics.
I suggest you read it again and this time more carefully. Thanks!
Suffa University is one of the best universities that I have recently visited in Pakistan. Though newly established, it boasts of quality teachers and excellent facilities. It is run by highly intellectual and immensely talented well experienced Vice Chancellor Dr. Sarfraz Hussain. The university will definitely yield quality students.
This author needs to realize that Mr Hoodbhoy is an MIT graduate, and before making any further allegations, he should re-evaluate Mr Hoodbhoy's point of view and try to improve the quality of education, rather than making personal remarks.
While India maintain the good standard with increasing the number of universities. I agree with Prof Att ur Rehman that we should increase the number of universities but we must focus on Standard too. Prof Pervaiz hood Bhoy one of the top brain of pak rightly outlined the draw backs in Pakistani educational system in his article published in Tribune.pk.we can lean from india. As India has ambitious plans to increase graduate numbers in a way which would give it the size and status of an education superpower. Without lowering standard of education while in case of Pak HEC lower the standard of education to large extent. The figures are staggering. India's government speaks of increasing the proportion of young people going to university from 12% at present to 30% by 2025 - approaching the levels of many Western countries.It wants to expand its university system to meet the aspirations of a growing middle class, to widen access, and become a "knowledge powerhouse". It will mean increasing the country's student population from 12 million to over 30 million, and will put it on course to becoming one of the world's largest education systems. Rippling through India's education system are giant waves of young people who by 2020 will swell the country's labor pool by 100 million workers. And more will be coming behind them: Half the 1.2 billion people here are younger than age 25. By contrast, China, Europe, and other major economies face shrinking workforces because of aging populations. To accommodate this crush of young people, the Indian government says the country must build 1,000 universities and 50,000 colleges within the next decade. By comparison, the total number of colleges in the United States, including two-year institutions, is 4,200. Simply put, this country needs more institutions of higher learning if it is going to be an economic powerhouse in the 21st century. It also needs better schools. And it needs them now. A recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute, a consulting firm, found that less than 17 percent of India's graduates were immediately employable. As a result, top Indian firms often have to put new hires through months of in-house schooling to train them for jobs for which they were supposed to be qualified.
Dr Pervaz Hood bhoy in his last article, pointing the real issue regarding the substandard of higher education in Pak. We should focus on these issue it is very Important for betterment of higher education in Pak. Indian standards are very high in education compare to Pak. I can give you bit of glimpse about Indian education standards. Ok we have such number of universities now in Pak but what we can do is to introduce the system as India has,, The Indian Institutes of Technology introduce Joint Entrance Examination (abbreviated IIT-JEE or simply JEE). It is an annual college entrance examination in India. It is used as the sole admission criterion by the sixteen Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The examination is organised each year by one of the various IITs, using a round robin rotation pattern. It has a very low admission rate (about 1 in 50 in 2011) and is considered the toughest exam in India after the UPSC's Engineering Services Examination which determines entry into the elite Indian Engineering Services. India also has CAT, (Common Admission Test) is a computer based test held in India. This test scores a person on the bases of Quantitative Ability, Data Interpretation, Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning. According to Asian Survey of Exams, CAT is rated as the third toughest test in Asia, after UPSC's Indian Engineering Services at first and IIT-JEE at the second spot. We must introduce such toughest exam in Pak. As Indian carried out very good research institutes. Indian scientists are very well known in world. But can you tel me ant ten Pak scientists to whom world recognized ?? even you can just tell me five names??
How many Ph.Ds Dr. Atta has producted and how many Dr. Hoodbhai has? does anyone know?
8,000 research papers ..............and what is the citation rate of these papers by other scholars ?
Sir you should take the Prof. Hoodbhoy's comments seriously. I also studied in Pakistan and I can not agree with you at all. All the allegations from Prof. Hoodbhoy are very serious and very true. Please save education in Pakistan. People in Europe respect Pakistani students but not Pakistani's generally. Please let it stay like this if you can not improve it.
ET editors please wake up and take up your responsibilities. This article should have been returned to author for making it decent and worthy of publication before its publication. Such academic controversy deserves better tone and diction. If founder of HEC resorts to such type of discourse while having differences with another accomplished scholar & scientist. It's ample proof of deterioration of academic and research standards we are talking about. Also readers of ET deserve better from the paper any higher education and research issues and debates.
With published papers like make electricity from jinns, stop avalanches from a walkie talkie, drive car from water etc etc you can publich thousands more than what you publish.
In india it isnt allowed, so you are right, you will have to improve the quality of your research
With due respects to both of the gentlemen, Dr. Hoodbhoy has nothing good to say about anyone...
Great article. I am a University professor and I do NOT agree with Hoodboy's arguments. The plagiarism checking system for the students and teachers is very strict and I have never seen such system in 4o years of my academic career. HEC has provided an excellent and transparent system of PhD and M.Sc. theses evaluation but it is upto the teaching community & universities how they are sincere; I see no fault of HEC if some thesis is below standard. Publication papers in internationally accepted peer reviewed journals is not a simple task as there is double blind review. Sitting is the office and writing critical article is different thing but doing some practical efforts is a real thing. Dr. Rahman, pl. continue your efforts for the promotion of higher education in country; Pakistan needs you...!
@Baqar:
I wonder if somebody like Pervez Hoodboy who is hated because of his Liberal view would be given HEC chairmanship.
Dr. Hoodbhoy was offered an adjunct position at LUMS but he was too arrogant to accept it.
Its easy to catch plagiarism these days. You cannot publish plagiarized work in a reputable conference/journal. Some people have created a business out of journals and they publish what ever is sent to them and most of these publishers are Indian. 'Numbers game' is one of the metric used all over the world and not just in academia. Quality of research work can easily be improved by supporting and encouraging to publish in highly ranked Conferences/Journals. Moving on forward the most important thing to do is link academia with industry. We have a good flourishing IT industry and we can take advantage of researchers in this regard.
Please try to distinguish between the quality and quantity of research work. Dr. Hoodbhoy raised a concern over the quality of the research work, not on the quantity. In my opinion, the quality of research work can’t be assessed through number of publications. There should be an argument on the contribution to field of knowledge along with the originality of the research work.
I am a bit disappointed after reading this article. It would ve been better if the article of Dr Hoodbhoy was replied here in a point by point manner to provide precision and accurate answers, not the vague one like here. Also, i agree with the many comments here saying the LUMS attack was in very bad taste. Lets not forget that the author was appointed by a dictator who was not the well wisher of pakistan for sure. For example it would have been much preferable if we did have a lot of socual scientists working on researching and finding solutions of how not to get more than 40k pakistanis die at the hands of the cancer of terrorism, what kind of enterpreneurships the young pakistanis can do ( pls dont say that the scientific research in the HEC days has led to anything or will lead to anything like that in the next 10 yrs despite the number of articles published:we are far far behind on that and highly unlikely we ll reach it anytime sooner; not sure if the dear terrorsits and the corrupt elite's incompetence annhilates us anyway) and what social reforms are necessary to get rid of the illiteracy , especially in women of next generation. Work on reforms of of the primary education sector and getting rid of the feudal culture was also something the HEC's admirable haste of getting a certain number of "international" publications ignored (with Impact factors of less than one, you will still be called author of international scientific paper according to HEC rules). So i dont understand if publishing good work in scince was the target or producing PhDs who are nt able to face international market ( i know many, and not their fault coz the criterion to choose them was sluggish) or solvingg problems of this country, most of which are still there or much worse. This article of yours has nt convinced me at all.
Dr Hoodbhoy should try politics he has all the features of a good politician!
Dear Dr. Atta as per data available through Dawn there were 142 plagiarism cases reported to the HEC. Please ask your HEC to share that data with stake holders with all punishments and actions taken. The Chemotherapy type thesis are appearing in press and research carried out in Education sector is badly reflecting other side of your opinion. Just visit your Thesis repository i.e. eprints.hec.gov.pk and things will be more clear to you. For God sake be realistic and assess the impact of so called 8000 research papers in Pakistani Society. As per your website www.hec.gov.pk there were almost 250 Foreign Faculty Professors who have joined, served and left before the completion of the project. One of the foreign faculty was involved in the Plagiarism and Dr. Ishtiaq Qadri was terminated from NUST. Everyone is aware of the state of the Higher Education you are talking about. Private sector Universities have opened their campuses in Bungalows and operating under the nose of the HEC i.e. within islamabad there are more than 10 affiliated Institutions of Gomal, Islamia and University of Sargodha and offering degrees in Engineering, Business, IT and Education disciplines. Why every time you come to protect HEC? Why don't you accept the criticism? Don't be personal with Pervez Hoodbhoy he is not an ordinary person lilke me. He also has attained many strategic positions and has unique assessment aptitude. If you are really good person then don't get personal about Dr. Pervez.
Dr. Attaur Rehman has done so much for Pakistan's higher education. I wonder what Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy has done?
We should thank Dr. Attaur Rehman for the excellent work he has done over the period of years for improving higher education in Pakistan. We need more universities Sir, we need more funding and we need more research and development and we still need to improve the standard of our education and universities. We must not contend with what we have achieved, our next goal should be to have our universities in top 100 and then top 10.
At the same time, we must also plan to take the further step to create link between academia and industry and government can play a key role in this regard.
Dr. Attaur Rehman is an inspiration for all of us. He is the father of higher education in Pakistan. Higher education is flourished because of him and we started moving towards a research culture in Pakistan.
People like Pervez Hoodbhoy have no credibility what so ever.
Sir, Dr. Hoodbhoy made some specific allegations of people who were caught cheating and are now Dean and VC somewhere i PAkistan. You did not respond to that.
He made a point that quantity was promoted at the expense of quality and you defend yourself saying that Pakistan produced more papers per million than India. How is that a defense? You are actually substantiating what Dr. Hoodbhoy said.
Finally your provide a like to a Pakistani website to refer to the 6 Pakistani institutions in top 500 globally. Why not instead provide the link to the international organization which has rated you so high so we can determine the credibility and reliability of the rate independently?
Finally the personal attack on Dr. Hoodbhoy seemed to be in poor taste.
As an outsider, I do not have a way to determine whether you are right or Dr. Hoodbhoy but reading his OpEd which appeared to be specific vs your response which is more generic, it does appear that his points seem to have more credibility.
Author, Can we make a dam by virtue of that research on our own.Any thing made in pakistan selling like a hot cake abroad.Any medicin,any pesticide,any invention any discovery?.
For you it is "Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy". Sir, please do not lose your manners and common sense while involved in a debate. I have met lot of Pakistani scholars and they are more interested in living large andn staying in the West not research and going back to Pakistan. Let us honest who are we kidding?
Having LUMS contract not renewed: Is it not similar to being one day forced to leave the positions of advisor to president on science and HEC chairman? And does it really matter for the merit of your argument?
Winning awards is an activity similar to the boxer who never loses in the ring but gets thoroughly thrashed in regular street fights. And this is an argument offered by award winning people to self assure other awards winning people, which motivates thmselves to bring more token awards, not necessarily having any connection with reality. Remember: word "social" in "social media" is as much far from real socialisation as any lonesome, computer-screen-glued, anti-social nerd can be. Simiarly research with HEC money by award chasing Pak scientists, has as much to do with knwledge, as the sports-man-spirit displayed by chukers has to do with the sports.
Maybe one good reason WHY Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy is no longer in LUMS is because the current HEC chairman is part of the LUMS Board of Trustees and LUMS does need the HEC on their side financially, at the end of the day. Maybe that is why they let Pervez Hoodbhoy go, a man who has refused to silence himself on the wrongs of the HEC and their much cherished farce chromotherapy thesis. And shame on you Atta-ur-Rehman for your last shot was non-academically fashioned below the belt; what a low level to stoop down to for an EX-CHAIR OF THE HIGHER EDUCATIONAL COMISSION OF THE GREAT STATE OF PAKISTAN! Please do come to LUMS and we will show you the 1215 member petition, which was signed in favor of renewal of Pervez Hoodbhoy's contract. We still respect him abundantly and he was nothing short of robbed of us. Our best guess is that the HEC stole him.
The above report appears to be contradicting Javaid Laghari's report per this link: http://newsweekpakistan.com/the-take/364 One of the points I note: "Catching up to the rest of the world must start now. And there is much ground to cover. For Pakistanis between the ages of 17 and 23, access to higher education is at 5.1 percent—one of the lowest in the world. (India is at 12.2 percent and aiming for 30 percent by 2020.) Pakistan has 132 universities for a population of 180 million and a student population of about 1.1 million. India has 504 universities with an enrollment of over 15 million (its enrolment target is 40 million by 2020). Pakistan has approved funding for two new universities. Over the next five years, India will have established 29 universities and 40 other institutes. Pakistan can today produce about 700 Ph.D.s every year (up from a dismal 200 in 2002) while India can produce 8,900 and China some 50,000"
Mr Rahman appears to be living in a cloud cuckoo land.
Honestly speaking, I have met couple of fully compensated scholars from Pakistan here in London, UK and they seemed to have no interest in research and academia. Instead they are doing it because they get free accommodation and tuition fee in very expensive cities of the world and would get huge increase in their salaries if they managed to get their degrees. In fact many of them are thinking to stay put in foreign lands foe good.
Dear Dr Atta, I respect both you and Perviz. but I'd like to mention here that Perviz pointed out the right thing as he always do. He questioned your policy of 'Number game' and want your focus to be on quality of papers and not quantity of papers published and as he mentioned in his article, if Dr X and Y were found doing plagiarism, why were they left free and they became Dean's and VC's.
You are right HEC has improved quality of higher education we, as students, can see that but if someone is pointing finger at something not really good, you must have the guts to accept that criticism and not start crying like stubborn boys.
Hopes you understand.
Regards,
The rebuttal would have had more credibility were it not for the swipe at Mr. Hoodbhoy at the end of the article. According to the 2012 rankings, UET Lahore is ranked number 601+ along with University of Lahore and University of Karachi, which are counted among the 6 talked about by the author. 601+ is a collection of all the also-rans, including stalwarts like University of Dhaka, University of Jordan, etc, To me, that's not a banner headline for anyone.
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2012?page=28
I would have hoped the Editors of the Tribune would have done their homework, even if Mr. Rahman did not.
Hats off the Dr Atta ur Rehman.... a true inspiration.... Thank you Sir for your kind efforts to promote research in the academia of Pakistan.... and thank you for NUST!!!
I, myself am a part of academia and work closely with researchers in Pakistan... and must admit, we have a lot of potential that needs to be tapped and inspirations like Dr Atta ur Rehman work as active catalysts for junior researchers like ourselves.
"8,000 research papers were published from Pakistan, overtaking India in terms of research output per million population — a historic achievement.
If I remember correctly, Dr.Hoodbhoy was talking about the quality of this system and how the system is scheming the numbers game with no accountability of originality of work, let alone plagiarism.
Now the author is arguing how the numbers / per population basis is an achievement, like GDP.
Am I the one seeing this ?
I must say that Atta ur Rehman's reply to Pervez Hoodbhoy's article is unconvincing and his reference to the article entitled 'six of our universities ranked in the top 500 in the world' is equally unconvincing' (the readers can see themselves going to the link). Hoodbhoy has raised and reported some really important points on the deficiencies of the higher education system in Pakistan even if some real progress was made. Atta ur Rehman's comment at the end, on the non-renewal of Hoodbhoy's contract at LUMS is really disgusting and I prefer not adding anything more. Below the belt comments can never up-grade your stature.
Dr AR, I have so much respect for you and for Prof Naqvi, but please accept the reality for once. HEC was a revolutionary step taken, but it was more of a NUMBER GAME than setting up EXCELLENCE CENTRES [Colleges and Universities] and producing QUALITY graduates. I have some serious reservations here: since the inception of HEC, you have concentrated more on establishing universities, just to show numbers and gave University status to dozens of Colleges without any sensible reason; you have started numbers of projects to build campuses all over Pakistan while you knew there was not much demand, for instance, in 2008 Comsats Kohat campus had fewer number of students than the faculty staff; you have enrolled more and more numbers of students just to fill the space and ignored the merit and the calibre of those students; you have bluntly ignored the quality of teaching faculty and hired people (just to fill the vacancies) as Lecturers and Assistant Professors who had poor grades and skills; eventually, these teachers are now delivering the worst possible, which finally resulting in extremely poor quality of the product: the university graduates. These university graduates are our future. Tomorrow they will be Secretaries, Researchers, Technocrats, Economists, Teachers, etc. What if they are not well trained? The system will collapse if they won’t have capacity to handle the challenges. Further, again just for numbers, you gave scholarships to every below average student and have spent billions of Rupees on them. 90% of HEC sponsored PhD students were sent abroad to low ranking world universities; only, 10% (around 200 students) were sent to world’s top 100 universities. Furthermore, as I said, you were always after NUMBERS than QUALITY, so you have set promotions of university teachers on the basis of numbers and not quality of produce. Today, just on the basis of these numbers, every university has dozens of people in grade 21 and 22, while only a few of them deserve. Dr AR, you have don’t so much good, but let’s accept these limitations in the system, let’s recognise and acknowledge these problems, and let’s raise our voice to reform certain things which eventually impact our next generations’ quality life.
Keep on day dreaming....We did see your video with Parvez Hodboy where you remind dumbstruck in front of him,trying to put forward your biased arguments against his harsh truth "Pakistan education is crumbling" ....Now which fool will believe your words...Good Day Rehman saab...time to retire...
wow. Seems like a war between Hoodbhoy and Attaur Rahman.