Universities should be more than just examinations

Universities should promote research in order to help the country deal with some of the crisis that it faces.

In 1862, a legislation was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by none other than Abraham Lincoln. It is known as the ‘Morrill Act’.

The legislation stipulated the establishment of at least one ‘Land Grant University’ in each US state, whereby the federal government granted financing and land to set up a university. However, the main aim was not to merely educate students but to also engage with the local communities; to train them and build within them the technical capacities required for problem solving, especially those issues related with the agricultural and engineering sectors.

The legacy of this legislation is that universities and academics all across present-day US play a vital role in acting as ‘think tanks’; hosting high quality research and advising the government on various levels about issues of public policy and technical innovation.

The outreach of such a role can even be global. For example, the Earth Institute based at the Columbia University in New York, is hosting the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) at the request of the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki Moon.

SDSN aims to link universities, businesses and other knowledge institutions globally to tackle the shared challenge of finding solutions to sustainable development. The objective being that the network will effectively assist universities all over the world in problem solving.

Closer to home

Unfortunately, we have been unable to utilise the full potential of our institutions in a similar manner. For one, we have not been able to foster a culture of promoting research. The credibility of a university is recognised by the quality of the research that it conducts. In this, our institutions lag far behind, even when compared to other countries in the region.

A lot has to do with the financial incapacity of such institutions, whether public or private, and we often fail to retain potentially brilliant academic minds in the country, resulting in an alarming ‘brain drain’.

This is mainly because of a lack of opportunities and an inhospitable environment for promoting research. The government relies on non-governmental organisations to guide them in matters of public policy and national visioning rather than on the academia that should ideally be host to the best of minds and facilities for research and development.

If we look at Karachi, then we have the basic infrastructure in place with the existence of a significant number of higher learning institutes that cover multiple disciplines. However, their contribution in ‘problem solving’ of the urban challenges is minimal.

While the universities have made efforts at seeking an outreach for problem solving, the approach does not appear to be very proactive and universities may need to establish dedicated ‘centres of excellence’ to attract the best minds in the country, as well as all available funding and donations.

At the moment, the focus is more on getting ‘project-based’ funding rather than initiating processes of sustained input.

The government has done little in terms of policy or financial support to promote a role of academic institutions as centres of quality research and as government ‘think tanks’. Normally, the industrial sector creates a mutually beneficial relationship with higher level academic institutions in funding research and in increasing the capacity of both faculty and students. In Karachi, this trend is evident to some level in business institutions but it is almost nonexistent in institutions of engineering and sciences.

There is an urgent need to initiate a dialogue and develop a framework where institutions of higher learning become the leading players in solving the various diverse challenges being faced in promoting sustainable urban growth in the city. In the process, we will also be investing in the students: our youth and our future.

Farhan Anwar is an urban planner and runs a non-profit organization based in Karachi city focusing on urban sustainability issues 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th, 2014.