Cuts in higher education

Regrettably, cutting government expenditures in this country results in the education sector's budget being decreased.

For the past few months, this newspaper has been consistently advocating that the government take a stronger stand on cutting back government expenditures. Regrettably, the priority afforded to higher education, and education in general, in this country is so low that when any cuts are made, these sectors are usually the first one to face them. We would have to say that the one unequivocally good thing about the Musharraf regime was the massive increase in budgeting it gave to higher education, notably in the form of an elevated status and major extra funding for the Higher Education Commission (HEC). Once he left, it seems that the government decided to cut back on funding under this allocation. Public-sector universities, which were used to getting hundreds of millions of rupees every year for academic programmes and new staff hiring are now suddenly facing with what they say are severe budgetary shortfalls, caused by the cuts to the HEC’s annual allocation in the federal budget.

However, there seems to be another side to the story as well. It turns out that the plea taken by the government is that the cuts are caused not by any policy of revenge against the previous military regime but rather because the universities that received the funding failed to come up with any plans for spending the funding wisely, especially as far as long-term planning is concerned. If one takes a look at established and reputed universities overseas, one finds that financial planning goes hand-in-hand with a long-term vision of a particular institution along with a detailed scheme of how that vision is to be achieved.  In the absence of any such planning, the funding for the public-sector universities – around six dozen in all – has been drastically cut. And the response from the latter has been basically knee-jerk. This is not to say that the vice-chancellors and administrators of these educational institutions may have some valid points but by and large to threaten to resign en masse is not going to resolve the situation to anyone’s liking.

One cannot deny the fact that despite its many flaws and constraints, the country’s public-sector higher education system needs to be reformed in a very comprehensive fashion. From the system of assessment and testing, to teacher training, new recruitment of faculty and availability of physical resources such as classrooms, laboratories and playing fields and extra-curricular activities, there is much that our universities lack. However, one should also avoid generalising given that considerable progress has been made in several institutions of higher learning and that even in some of those which do not enjoy a good reputation, there are still pockets of academic excellence and learning. The objective clearly is to improve standards across the board and this will be done only if each institution chalks out a plan for improvement and implements it. This should be seen as an end it itself and not to be done by the goading of an external regulator such as the HEC.

Having said that, there is much that is good about these universities as well. For starters, they charge nominal fees and historically have educated the bulk of the middle class and professionals, many of whom then proceeded to immigrate and live successful lives overseas. Over the past five years or so, the increase in allocations for higher education has been remarkable and one can only hope that the upward trend is continued. However, the current crisis places the potential for further success at risk. So what is to be done? For starters, the heads of the public-sector universities, the HEC chairman and the planning commission need to sit down and brainstorm in a manner so that they can re-order their priorities in a manner that they become largely coincident with one another. For this to happen, the possibility that the cuts in the funding are reversed to some extent – contingent on the creation of fiscal space once the constraints placed by the flood crisis go away – should be explored. This should be matched at the universities’ end by a written commitment to a long-term plan for reform and growth by each administrator and it should be adhered to as part of a covenant for further sustained funding by the HEC.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2010.