Unlearned lessons

Considering that the country faces what all sides regard as an education emergency at every level, there is a remarkably lackadaisical approach to addressing one of the most serious problems Pakistan faces. At the bottom end of the emergency are ghost schools, absentee teachers and a curriculum that is ramshackle and chaotic. At the top end, our universities are, in many cases, underfunded and poorly staffed, if staffed at all. The plight of one of our premier houses of learning the Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) is a case in point. It lacks a boundary wall, endures occasional invasions of classrooms by beggars and has numerous departments that are both poorly equipped and understaffed.

Staffing problems are being exacerbated by the uncertainty over the future of about 20 faculty members who had been inducted into the university under a programme that is about to terminate. They were appointed by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and now find themselves in limbo, with the university saying nothing about how their futures might pan out. In a move that almost beggars belief, the university has started bachelors programmes in social, biological and natural sciences but lacks the faculty members to run the programmes. Students will have signed up in good faith only to find themselves adrift on a sea of unknowing. The departments of sociology and pharmacy are similarly short-staffed, there are not enough buses for the students and the entire operation is hamstrung by a government ban on hiring/recruitment. The vice-chancellor (VC), at least, has the grace to admit that the university has ‘problems’ but that they were being “tackled with the help of the HEC, the government and philanthropists”. This may be so, but there are apparently no short-term solutions to the majority of the pitfalls faced by students in search of an education. The education emergency is fixable — but only if provincial and federal governments really want to fix it.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 27^th, 2013.

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