Selecting VCs in Punjab

A committee composed of reputable scholars interviews PhDs to recommend a panel for the chancellor to pick the winner.

On June 15, a story from an Express Tribune correspondent in Lahore about the selection of vice-chancellors (VCs) was headlined thus: “Court reserves verdict after final arguments: Petitioners say candidates with foreign degrees preferred.” Not quite. The fact of the matter is that even foreign degree holders were not accorded non-discriminatory treatment. Selecting VCs in today’s world of knowledge intensive competition ought to be an extremely serious business. The selectee should not only have produced a reasonable quantity of knowledge personally, but should also have a flair for managing knowledge producers and an understanding of how best to deploy knowledge. One could find many faults with the various Higher Education Commission (HEC) policies and its manner of policing universities, but there was a broad acceptance of the criteria laid down for the selection of VCs. A search committee composed of reputable scholars was supposed to interview good PhDs to recommend a panel for the chancellor to pick up the final winner.

This process has been challenged in the case of the appointment of vice-chancellors of six public sector universities in Punjab. Petitioners claim eligibility in terms of the laid down criteria, which required a PhD degree in any subject from a reputed university. According to petitioners, the search committee changed the criteria and preferences and invited only foreign qualified candidates. Call letters were issued to candidates holding PhD degree from the top 500 foreign universities of the world.

This writer also made an application to the Government College University (GCU), Lahore to test the merit of the process. With a PhD in economics from the University of Cambridge, the writer thought that he would have no problem being shortlisted for an interview. Thinking that the governor as chancellor is the appointing authority, he sent his CV to the governor’s office. A quick response was received from that office, saying that the governor was bound by the advice of the chief minister. The writer was advised to approach that office. The writer routed the CV to the chief minister’s secretariat. In response, a letter was sent to secretary higher education for “appropriate action and report to this secretariat for information of the chief minister within seven days”. A copy of this letter was endorsed to this writer as well. Obviously, the appropriate action for the department of higher education would have been to place the application before the committee shortlisting candidates.

After some days, the writer read in the press that interviews were being held of the shortlisted candidates. The writer had not been issued a call letter. Upon telephone contact with the education department, an additional secretary tersely told the writer that his application was never received! And even if received, the reason might be that the writer did not satisfy the unwritten criteria of being a Ravian in the case of GCU, Lahore. As a matter of fact, the writer is more than qualified, having been a GC student from class XI to XVI, a lecturer at the university in the beginning of his career and the holder of the Mahbubul Haq Chair as recently as 2007-08.



Published in The Express Tribune, June 17th, 2011.