University Beauty Pageant

The university, or any educational institution, cannot be reduced to a single number on a list. Just like the character of a person cannot be measured by a single feature, such as height, weight or worse, colour; reducing the value of a university to a single metric, judged by third parties that have never bothered to visit or engage with the institution, is both flawed and dangerous. But the real problem is not just with the judges, it is with the institutions themselves that have created their entire mission to climb rankings done by newspapers and magazines.

In the past, I have written several times about the problems with rankings and the metrics, and why institutions like the HEC have no business to rank Pakistani institutions. But in my most recent trip to Pakistani universities, I realised that I was completely wrong. The fundamental problem was not with the HEC (though that does promote this behaviour), but instead it was with institutional leadership. Over the summer, I met with multiple leaders of higher education institutions and always inquired about their grand mission or vision for the institution. With the exception of one or two (and two is probably a stretch here), I was deeply disturbed by their answers. Time and again, upon my prodding, I would hear that the mission of the institution was to climb up the rankings. In presentations and in private conversations, the sense of achievement was only connected to rankings.

Just as defining beauty in a beauty pageant through a set of arbitrary criteria fosters unacceptable behaviour, a fascination with rankings undermines the core beauty of the university. It rewards certain aspects and downplays the role of debate, dialogue and discussion. In my conversations with VCs, Rectors and Deans, I found no mention of the importance of creativity, or an emphasis on rigour or a fundamental commitment to values of inquiry, research and open discussion. University leadership is not interested in fostering debates on important economic, social and policy issues of the nation, they are interested in how they can increase the number of PhD faculty so that they climb up in the rankings. There is little in the way of creating avenues to talk about important topics such as CPEC and its environmental impact, the cost of climate change to Pakistan, the rising rates of anti-microbial resistance and the effect of urbanisation on poverty and many other areas in all disciplines that deserve rich debate. Universities are so much more than pure numbers. Even measuring the economic impact, which is more encompassing than an arbitrary ranking, does not capture the contribution of the university to the society at large.

Even more troubling is the fascination with a single digit to represent an entire career. While research publications are important, the assumption that more is automatically better and if you are not publishing an awful lot, you are somehow a failure is equally disturbing. As a colleague told me in an unguarded moment, if Abdus Salam were to be judged by the current criteria, he would be regarded as a failure. Peter Higgs, a more recent Nobel Laureate, wouldn’t fare much better either.

I have spent most of my adult life at various universities. In some ways, I grew up but never left school. I often wonder, why in certain parts of the world, the relationship of society at large with the university is so much richer, even for people who never went to a university. The university to these people holds a place of reverence and aspiration. That, unfortunately, is not true for our society. The university is not a place that comes to mind when we think of our most prized national possessions and treasures. For the longest time, I used to pin the blame on general societal values. But I have come to realise that it is not just the society that shares this burden, the values, aspirations and vision of the university are probably a bigger cause. 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2016.

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