How Do We Achieve Good Quality Education in Our Universities?
- Prof. Nadeem ul Haque criticized Pakistan's higher education system, noting that not a single Pakistani university meets global standards.
- Prof. Dr. Asghar Zaidi emphasized the importance of a student-centric approach, inclusiveness, critical thinking, and improving research infrastructure in higher education.
- The need for universities to be declared autonomous, with a focus on good governance, financial sustainability, and embracing digital learning and technology to enhance education.
On 22nd May 2024, Pukhtoon Students Council of Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) Islamabad, invited former Vice Chancellor GCU Lahore; Prof. Dr. Asghar Zaidi and Pakistan Institute Development Economics’ (PIDE) Prof. Dr. Nadeem ul Haque. The seminar titled “The Prosperity Triangle: Leveraging Demographic Dividend and Political Economy for Sustainable Development in Pakistan”, was held in the Department of Physics auditorium, where more than three hundred students were present. It was a panel discussion moderated by M.Phil. scholar, Kashif Khan Bhittani. There were three major parts to the seminar: demographic dividend, political economy, and sustainable development. Prof. Nadeem ul Haque criticised the higher education system, Vice Chancellors, Higher Education Commission, Professors, and protocol culture in the universities. He further added that “not a single Pakistani university meets a global standard” of the provision of quality education.
Similarly, Prof. Dr. Asghar Zaidi raised the question, “How do we achieve good quality education in our universities?” He discussed five major approaches to sustainable, high-quality higher education. He pressed upon adopting a ‘Student-Centric’ approach to education in which the learning outcomes and upskilling of students, in order to fit into the modern working force were the main priorities. He further maintained that Pakistan’s higher education system needs inclusiveness, openness, freedom of speech, debate culture, tolerance for differences of opinion, and enrollment of marginalised people in Pakistan.
At time same time, he also added that cultivating critical thinking, problem-solving, and active learning in the classroom is crucial to assisting students in acquiring the abilities needed to succeed in the modern world. Therefore, using interactive tools and technologies to improve student engagement and support a learner-centered approach is one efficient way to accomplish this aim.
Following this, he was of the view that three things are important for higher education: faculty, curriculum development, and assessment methods, which need to be continuously enhanced to match international education standards. He also shed light on the classroom atmosphere, which brings out the ‘diversity’ among the students as it invokes ‘curiosity” and leads to ‘creativity’. For him, curiosity and creativity were the skills that give academic knowledge its power and usefulness in the real world; making these some of the most valuable skills that university graduates should possess as they prepare to enter the global economy. According to Ecological Systems Theory, child development is shaped by activities and experiences across different ecological contexts. Out-of-university activities that adolescents participate in are often less structured and may have a greater influence on their creativity and curiosity development than their experiences within the school context. Ecological systems theory thus posits that adolescent development is influenced by the broader cultural context, whereas people in the same cultural context usually share common beliefs, concepts, values, and behaviours.
Furthermore, the laboratory infrastructure and teaching facilities must be overhauled to match the requirements of international higher education accreditation bodies. Developed countries around the world invest billions of dollars every year in research and development (R&D) activities. They have linked their research institutions with relevant industries where ideas are transformed into reality and tangible assets for the prosperity and growth of the nation. While the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Japan, Russia, and Germany are active R&D performers, Pakistani research scholars have to deal with multiple challenges in any effort to bring theory into practice.
On a broad scale, authentic research needs plenty of time and funds because financial dependency dilutes the ideas of the researchers. There is no denying that research work is expensive, and it is difficult to sustain it within the limited resources that Pakistani researchers usually have at their disposal. There are 174 public universities registered with the Higher Education Commission (HEC), but only four—Quaid-i-Azam University, the National University of Science and Technology, the Lahore University of Management Sciences, and the University of Punjab—could secure a position among the top 500 global institutions.
Funded projects shield the innovative ideas of researchers and save them from financial stress. The world’s top-ranked universities align research work with industries, where they give financial support to the researchers and facilitate them in many ways. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, there is a chasm between the universities and the industries, and the research work is not directly interlinked. Moreover, Pakistan faces poor governance and administrative issues over research grants, which create even more social and psychological problems for the researchers. The HEC funds for research are not properly utilised.
Under such fragile policies, it gets very difficult for the researchers to come up with high-impact ideas, and many of them move to foreign countries in the midst of their degree as these countries value research and offer scholarships. If this trend continues, it could have negative consequences for the country. Interaction between academia and industry is the missing link. If we can somehow establish, facilitate, and sustain such a link, things can transform for the better in terms of Pakistan’s R&D horizon. Lastly, the professor concluded his remarks by stating that universities should be declared autonomous with checks on good governance and financial sustainability. In the digital world we live in today, technology plays a major role in improving education, hence teachers and administrators should work upon improving efficiency and giving students a more flexible and accessible learning environment by adopting digital learning and technology.
The writer is a researcher from District North Waziristan.
