A more perfect (student) union

Learning from instructors, peers in different culture enables students to appreciate richness of our social fabric.

Studying for a brief period of a semester or a year at an institution outside the home institution provides students from all over the world a rich and powerful way to experience student life outside the confines of their dorms, institutions and cultures. Financial constraints, unfortunately, price many institutions from developing countries out of this experience. The tuition swap, enabling students to pay tuition at their home institution while studying at a foreign institution, does not always work due to a huge price disparity. But in a society as fragmented as ours, with a growing ethnic suspicion, our growing number of university students can benefit from something simpler and perhaps, far more profound.

Imagine an undergraduate student from the university of Gujrat or Peshawar or Balochistan spending a semester at the University of Karachi and vice versa. The argument by some that our curriculum is so packed that a semester at another institution would jeopardise the entire programme actually points to a much bigger problem. Is our educational programme so rigid that it allows for no time for personal development and no room for outside-the-class experience? If our higher education does not make us better, culturally aware and more socially accepting citizens, then what good is our higher education? If we are sceptical of accepting students from another province or another socioeconomic background for even a semester, how can we ever imagine creating a society that accepts all of its citizens equally?

Our youth represents our future and the hope associated with that future. Opportunity for someone to learn from instructors in a different academic culture, and interacting with peers from different backgrounds will enable them to appreciate the richness of our collective social fabric. It may lead to an improved understanding of a scientific or technical problem or it may not, but it will certainly lead to new social bonds that transcend culture, ethnicity and sect.

Some detractors of this approach may point to all kinds of logistical challenges associated with such an arrangement. Some may argue that the training approach at one institution is very different from the other. Others may say that few people would want to go institutions in smaller towns, while a lot more would be inclined to go to a larger city. All of these challenges at the end of the day are just logistical questions that can be answered if there is willingness to address them. If institutions that are separated by thousands of miles and in cultures that have nothing in common can create and sustain mechanisms for students to study abroad and enrich their lives, how come we, within a single country, are reluctant to do so?

As we look at our higher educational arrangements, we should ask ourselves: what is the purpose of higher education in Pakistan? The purpose of higher education is not just to come up with a better technology, improved research methodology or to develop a superior understanding of a previously unknown phenomenon. It is something much bigger. It is to create better citizens and enlightened human beings who are the cornerstone of a civilised society.

If higher education can play a role in improving our odds for a better social future, it should.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 16^th, 2014.

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