Education sector faces poor governance
An unchecked governance deficit and institutional deterioration in the education sector, especially higher education, are among two of the biggest domestic challenges currently. Failure to address them can prove disastrous for the nation.
These apprehensions were shared by senior academics and experts, including four vice-chancellors of different universities, during the annual meeting of the National Academic Council (NAC) of the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in Islamabad on Friday.
The session was chaired by IPS Executive President Khalid Rahman.
Contemplating the prevailing deficiencies in the country’s education system, University of Haripur Vice-Chancellor (VC) Dr Anis Ahmad pointed out that a good education system should be aimed at instilling confidence and creativity in students whilst shaping their character. However, he said the current system was missing this critical component.
International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) Anthropology Department Chair Dr Noreen Saher stated that curriculum designing revolves around three important features; information, skills and attitude-building. In Pakistan, however, she said the focus was primarily on the informational aspect, ignoring skills and attitude-building almost in its entirety. The result of this approach, according to her, was that students were well versed in information but lacked the skills or the attitude to excel professionally.
Former chief economist Fasihuddin and COMSATS Executive Director Dr Junaid Zaidi laid a lot of stress on science and technological education, calling it the need of the hour in the wake of challenges posed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
University of Peshawar’s former social sciences dean Dr Adnan Khan, on the other hand, was wary of the over-dependence of students on technology. This, he argued, could deteriorate their thinking and self-learning capacity, and hence suggested adopting a balanced approach.
Former federal secretary Hamid Hasan spoke about critically reviewing the West-influenced mentality where every academic endeavour was evaluated as per the Western paradigm.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 19th, 2020.