Public-sector universities: As the number goes up, quality sinks

A number of institutes are plagued with mismanagement and poor standards of teaching.

ISLAMABAD:

As the number of public sector universities has increased sharply during the last over one decade, the declining standards of teaching, research work, plagiarism, mismanagement, financial irregularities and establishment of illegal campuses pose a major challenge to the policymakers and higher education managers.

According to Higher Education Commission (HEC) data, the number of public universities has increased 400 per cent from 30 in 2002 to over 160 in 2015. But when it comes to quality of administration and teaching faculty most of the universities have failed to meet the standards.

Illegal campuses

HEC Chairperson Dr Mukhtar Ahmad told a vice-chancellors’ committee last year that the establishment of new or sub campuses without the commission’s permission would not be allowed or tolerated.



It was aimed at discouraging mushrooming of such campuses that according to the HEC chief, had reached over 140.

The illegal practice continues despite warning and notices issued by the HEC. Dr Ahmad said that action would be taken against campuses that lacked required facilities.

He said that recently many universities were told to close PhD and MPhil programmes for not following standard protocols, and duping gullible students to take admissions without provision of required facilities.

Committees on harassment

The HEC had once written to universities to form committees to tackle issues related to harassment and submit reports.

Last year a sexual harassment case was reported at the National University of Modern Languages (Numl) and an all-male committee was formed to probe the incident. A female teacher was later inducted into the committee.

Apart from National University of Science and Technology (Nust), Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) and a few other universities, majority of educational institutes have failed to set up such committees, even though it is mandatory as per HEC Anti-Sexual Harassment Act 2010.

Governance

Financial irregularities, misuse and waste of funds at public universities are reported every year.

According to an HEC officer privy to financial matters, higher education institutes prefer to appoint academics against the seat of director finance and similar other positions, instead of a financial expert. A teacher has no understanding or experience of finance. “Same is the case with appointments to the position of registrar of a university, which is mostly a teacher who gets blackmailed by the VC,” the official said.

Besides, the VCs take important decisions on their own and for years syndicate or governing body meetings are not called, which are the proper channels for approval of every decision.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a professor at QAU said that the VCs take decisions on their own instead of getting them approved by syndicate.

Plague of plagiarism

Publishing of substandard and plagiarised research papers has become a serious issue. For promotion, a teacher is required to get a certain number of papers published in research journals. Recently, two teachers of Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS) were conferred awards, despite the fact that they were blacklisted by the HEC for plagiarism.

“Many Chinese, Korean and other journals are ready to publish whatever you give them without properly checking for plagiarism,” said a teacher at NUST. He said that for the HEC checking each and every plagiarist was impossible but quality enhancement cells at every university could play a vital role.

Munir Ahmad, who has been dealing with copyright-related issues at the HEC said that some academic wrongly argue against any action on plagiarism committed before 2009, claiming that no proper policy existed then.

“They forget that Government Act 1965 was in place at that time”, he argued.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 6^th, 2015.