Going Global 5 conference was on higher education, the numbers quoted on lower education are out of context.
ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to a report by Jahanzaib Haque in your newspaper of March 12 titled “Counter-narrative: Education emergency or revolution at hand?”. I believe that it did not do justice to my talk in Hong Kong.
While the Going Global 5 conference was about higher education, the report quotes numbers of lower education which are out of context. Our higher education numbers, despite a three-fold increase, are still among the lowest in the region. That is what our increased accessibility focus is all about: To go from the current five per cent to 10 and then to 15 per cent by 2020.
I did emphasise in my talk that quality is currently priority number one for the Higher Education Commission (HEC)and that strategic plans for the HEC for the next five years is to bring relevancy to teaching and research through “universities building economies, communities and leadership”. The reporter did one-sided biased reporting, without conveying the HEC viewpoint on these issues, which does not help propagate an independent and unbiased media.
Dr Javaid Laghari
Chairperson, Higher Education Commission of Pakistan
Published in The Express Tribune, March 17th, 2011.
