HEC and social engineering

The explosion of higher education during the last decade is associated with a slow process of social engineering.

The devolution of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) is a national disaster the scale of which is no less than the natural disasters our country has witnessed over the past few years. The only difference is that, unlike natural disasters, this is a real human disaster in the making. It is a tsunami for Pakistan’s higher education sector; it will shake its very foundations and set back science education by at least 40 years. This article focuses on a few neglected aspects of the HEC debate, which, in my opinion, are central to judging its performance.

Amongst the gloom and doom that Pakistan has witnessed over the last decade, developments in higher education provide a reason for hope. Under the stewardship of Dr Attaur Rahman, the HEC has injected more energy into the higher education sector than the combined efforts of the last 30 years. This new emphasis on higher education was long overdue. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, primary education has received significant support from donors and policymakers, mostly based on evidence from World Bank studies that established a higher rate of return for primary education. More recent evidence has overturned this finding, indicating significantly large returns for higher education as well.

In a country with alarmingly high levels of illiteracy, primary education deserves all the support we can give. But the renewed emphasis on higher education under the HEC was timely, given the fast changing demographic profile of Pakistan. It is true that the HEC has been more successful in expanding access to higher education than in terms of raising quality. But even this quantitative expansion of higher education has beneficial social ramifications in the long term.

The explosion of higher education during the last decade has been associated with a slow process of social engineering. Three aspects of this social engineering are particularly noteworthy. First, even if university enrolments have not necessarily been accompanied with desirable academic skills, they have given rise to youth aspirations about the desirability of social change. Pakistan’s educated young are forming creative expectations about ways in which polity, economy and society should be organised to better serve their needs. This is a silent revolution of aspirations that holds in its midst the seeds for radical social change. Many societies have to wait for middle-class incomes to emerge before social reform can be effectively demanded. In Pakistan, where new sources of income generation are slow to emerge, this new generational struggle for inclusion has created a new constituency for change.

Second, by radically changing the incentive structure of higher education, the HEC has bestowed a new social and economic prestige to the education profession, bringing the structure of rewards at par with other important professions. Higher education is no longer a meagrely-paid profession. Academic career is now more attractive than 10 years ago.

A third aspect relates to HEC scholarships that have afforded middle- and lower-middle class students an important avenue for social and economic mobility. Overseas scholarships in science are particularly noteworthy in this regard. HEC scholarships in science and engineering have radically changed the nature of cohort that now comes to Oxford. Oxford is no longer the exclusive preserve of connected elite families. That, in my opinion, is a remarkable achievement. These profound social implications are generally neglected by the critics of the HEC.

HEC expenditures have overwhelmingly benefited middle- and lower-middle income classes. In a society where privilege trumps competition, these meritocratic rewards that distribute income away from the rich are sure to invite the ire of our policymakers. A time-tested principle of budget making in Pakistan is that pro-poor expenditures are mostly easily dispensable. That is why, when the going gets tough, the first item to be axed is the development budget. In a country where billions are wasted on patronage, the HEC has created an alternative system of rewards based on performance rather than predation. There might be a case for reform of the HEC, but not for its devolution or dissolution — the difference between the two may be very little.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2011.