A tribute to my father
My father was appointed as per law by full Board of Governors of HEC, he cannot be removed in this arbitrary manner.
On November 28, 2012, after over 10 years of service to the Higher Education Commission (HEC), my father was unceremoniously and illegally asked to vacate his position. Since my father was appointed as per law by the full Board of Governors of the HEC, he cannot be relieved of his duties in this arbitrary manner. The HEC Ordinance itself specifies how and when the executive director can be removed and the way he has been removed is not one of the specified methods.
For now, the prime minister has assigned the job of the executive director of the HEC, to the secretary of the Ministry of Education and Trainings. This despite the fact that the HEC Ordinance says in black and white that the executive director shall be appointed by the Commission itself.
Since this article is about my father, people will probably assume that I am biased. If so, why don’t we start by looking at the performance of the HEC over the last 10 years.
As of today, the quality assurance system of Pakistan is universally appreciated, six universities in Pakistan are internationally ranked by QS Rankings and research publications have skyrocketed compared to the past. Along with this, the number of university campuses has increased from 168 to 258 while student enrolment has increased from 330,000 to over 1,000,000. In this expansion of students in the higher education space, there has been a particular focus on women, with the percentage of women enrolled in universities going up from 36 per cent to 46 per cent. Balochistan and Fata have also been a focus, with over 3,000 scholarships launched for their residents.
Perhaps, readers will think that my father is not qualified enough: after all, integrity alone isn’t going to solve our education problems. Let’s have a look then at his CV. To summarise, he graduated at Hasan Abdal at the top of his class, graduated from Purdue University with a perfect 4.0 GPA and after earning a PhD in refractive optics at the age of 25, was appointed a tenured professor all before the age of 30. He then helped start up a cutting-edge tech company before leaving the US to come back to Pakistan where he became the dean of electrical engineering at the GIK Institute of Science & Technology. Later, he became an adviser to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
At 50 years of age, he is only getting started. I have seen him pour his heart and soul into Pakistan’s higher education sector. He has fought for every bit of funding for the students of Pakistan, travelled from Gilgit to Karachi viewing institutions everywhere and taking advice on how to improve them. He has earned the respect of almost everyone he has come into contact with, whether they agree with him or not.
In between, he has taught me that being patriotic does not simply mean bellowing the national anthem at the top of your lungs; it means putting in long hours at a job when you know you could be making more money elsewhere. It means putting up with the misery of the politics in our country. It means finding ways of being optimistic when everything around you is crumbling. It means that when your own government tries to fire you for doing the right thing, you simply go home to help your youngest son with his homework that night.
Let me end with the most meaningful words of praise I’ve heard for my father. Those words came from Arif Kiyani, someone none of you have ever heard of. He first started work for the University Grants Commission in 1989 as a driver and has worked with my father for many years. One day, without my prompting, he said to me: “Sahab wo insaan hai jis ne aaj tak mujhe ‘tu’ tak nahi kaha”.
People say that the best way to judge a person’s character is to look at the way they treat people in a lesser position. So, if you want to judge my father, go ahead.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 2nd, 2012.
For now, the prime minister has assigned the job of the executive director of the HEC, to the secretary of the Ministry of Education and Trainings. This despite the fact that the HEC Ordinance says in black and white that the executive director shall be appointed by the Commission itself.
Since this article is about my father, people will probably assume that I am biased. If so, why don’t we start by looking at the performance of the HEC over the last 10 years.
As of today, the quality assurance system of Pakistan is universally appreciated, six universities in Pakistan are internationally ranked by QS Rankings and research publications have skyrocketed compared to the past. Along with this, the number of university campuses has increased from 168 to 258 while student enrolment has increased from 330,000 to over 1,000,000. In this expansion of students in the higher education space, there has been a particular focus on women, with the percentage of women enrolled in universities going up from 36 per cent to 46 per cent. Balochistan and Fata have also been a focus, with over 3,000 scholarships launched for their residents.
Perhaps, readers will think that my father is not qualified enough: after all, integrity alone isn’t going to solve our education problems. Let’s have a look then at his CV. To summarise, he graduated at Hasan Abdal at the top of his class, graduated from Purdue University with a perfect 4.0 GPA and after earning a PhD in refractive optics at the age of 25, was appointed a tenured professor all before the age of 30. He then helped start up a cutting-edge tech company before leaving the US to come back to Pakistan where he became the dean of electrical engineering at the GIK Institute of Science & Technology. Later, he became an adviser to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
At 50 years of age, he is only getting started. I have seen him pour his heart and soul into Pakistan’s higher education sector. He has fought for every bit of funding for the students of Pakistan, travelled from Gilgit to Karachi viewing institutions everywhere and taking advice on how to improve them. He has earned the respect of almost everyone he has come into contact with, whether they agree with him or not.
In between, he has taught me that being patriotic does not simply mean bellowing the national anthem at the top of your lungs; it means putting in long hours at a job when you know you could be making more money elsewhere. It means putting up with the misery of the politics in our country. It means finding ways of being optimistic when everything around you is crumbling. It means that when your own government tries to fire you for doing the right thing, you simply go home to help your youngest son with his homework that night.
Let me end with the most meaningful words of praise I’ve heard for my father. Those words came from Arif Kiyani, someone none of you have ever heard of. He first started work for the University Grants Commission in 1989 as a driver and has worked with my father for many years. One day, without my prompting, he said to me: “Sahab wo insaan hai jis ne aaj tak mujhe ‘tu’ tak nahi kaha”.
People say that the best way to judge a person’s character is to look at the way they treat people in a lesser position. So, if you want to judge my father, go ahead.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 2nd, 2012.