What ails our public universities?

In times of economic crunch, devastating floods and messed up national priorities, the federal government has decided to slash funding for public universities. Vice-chancellors have threatened to tender resignations en bloc and close down the universities if they are refused more funds or if the government fails to release whatever it has already allocated to the Higher Education Commission (HEC), the entity through which they get their annual funding.

Education has a higher national purpose, i.e. training manpower for the country's development. It is an investment in the future of the nation, and must be considered as one of the key functions of the state. The present government, like its predecessors, is constrained by financial resources, and now it faces the gigantic task of rehabilitating millions of flood victims.

There is a failure of governance but what hurts the society at large is the question of collecting taxes. The taxation bureaucracy, by the estimates of one former finance minister, gobbles up around Rs500 billion in corruption. And deep and institutionalised corruption in public corporations eat up close to Rs300 billion. It is not hard to calculate the perks, privileges and corruption of the Pakistani bureaucracy and development agencies.

Whatever is left for development after paying domestic and international debts and national defence is very little and demands from different constituencies and departments too many. The solution is an equitable system of taxation, ending corruption through accountability that nets the high and mighty and not just petty government functionaries.

Unfortunately, education, let alone higher education, has never been on the agenda of the national parliament, the cabinets or the prime minister and chief executives of the provinces. Maybe we are expecting too much from assemblies filled with dozens of bogus degree-holders.

What about universities themselves? Have their academic and administrative leadership done anything to generate their own resources? There is too much wastage of revenues in every sector of the university system. Each public university has an army of employees or supporting staff that gain considerable clout with unionisation and political connection with various political parties. The unions pressurise the administration on employing more of their kin, thereby burdening the budget.

Public universities are full of deadwood, unproductive teachers that do very little in terms of research or even teaching except creating political factions and groups to intimidate the administration. If an honest external review of appointments in the public universities is conducted, not more than 10 per cent might be eligible to be instructors. But who would bell the cat that has grown sharp claws?

Most vice chancellors that are threatening to resign are a product of the corrupt public university system. They don’t have the will or the personal capacity to undertake internal governance reforms. Their interest is in completing their tenure and moving on with one additional badge of honour in their career.

The unions or political interference will not intimidate a visionary vice-chancellor with true commitment to the uplift of his public university. He would devote more time to creating endowments, reducing wastage, raising fees from those who can pay and providing scholarships to the poor. I am afraid neither the lot in the government nor the vice-chancellors can deliver on what is needed the most — good governance. So let all of them resign; it will make no difference.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2010.