Narrow alleys of higher-ed

At a restaurant in southern Poland, last week, I met a Pakistani server. He had been in Poland for a year. This young man defied many of the stereotypes we often associate with Pakistanis working in the food industry in Europe. He had gotten his undergraduate degree in Pakistan in applied geology, received an HEC fellowship to do a Masters in Hungary (in petroleum engineering) and then had gone back to Pakistan to work in the public sector. He tried his luck for three years, finding one door closed to him after another. In one particular case for a public sector job, he told me, he passed the requisite exam but was denied the position because his degree was in "applied" geology while the job was for someone who just had a geology degree, without the applied part! When he expressed his frustration to HEC staff, he found nothing but bureaucratic dismissals of his pleas. In another instance, the hiring managers were confused how someone with a geology degree can get a Masters in engineering. After three frustrating years, this young man was back in Europe, finishing another degree financed by a modest scholarship by the local university, and working on the side to make ends meet, hoping that this time things may turn out better.

There is an ongoing debate in many circles about why people choose to leave. As the numbers of people leaving have increased substantially, there are, as one can imagine, many different examples and sides to the story of young people leaving the country. There are also uncomfortable truths that many in the corridors of power are unwilling to listen. But we also need to acknowledge that sometimes people actually want to come back, and even do come back, only to find opportunities closed to them due to myopia, ignorance and our commitment to inertia of the system.

The story of how rigidly we view training and degrees and how disconnected we are from the rest of the world when it comes to interdisciplinary training, people switching disciplines or working in multiple fields is all too familiar to anyone who has tried to push the boundaries of the system. In my own experience working with universities and advising colleagues, I have found the HEC (and other bodies like PEC) to lack awareness or demonstrate serious understanding of avenues of inquiry and ability to develop intellectually. Higer education has become more about bureaucracy than knowledge. Despite the world moving on, we cannot imagine people doing a double major in engineering and history, or economics and chemistry, or even mathematics and biology. We cannot fathom someone having an undergraduate degree in one discipline (e.g. physics) and then doing a PhD in another (e.g. philosophy). I have been on admission committees at my university, and have worked with plenty of others around the world, and somehow it seems that Pakistan's higher education enterprise is stuck in a different era. While in many other places there is an emphasis on training, competence and promise, we tend to focus very narrowly on disciplinary boundaries and expect people to never evolve or transition. And if, for some reason, someone does get an opportunity to transition to another discipline, that person would be unemployable in the country.

There are many challenges that our universities, and regulatory bodies, face that are not their fault. Sharp and continuous budget cuts and political interference have had an extraordinary impact on the institutions. But lack of imagination or understanding of how institutions need to cultivate innovation, curiosity and intellectual development through interdisciplinary opportunities are not because of government budget cuts. It is because we are unwilling to give up control of a rigid system, unable to imagine a more open world where creativity thrives both in digging deep and engaging across disciplines. Our narrow alleys and rigid expectations are not preserving quality, they are depriving us of people who have fresh ideas, ambitious spirit and a bold attitude to create something new and exciting.