Adil Najam
Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, one of Pakistan’s pre-eminent intellectuals and someone who I and ATP holds in the highest esteem (here and here), has written a letter to the editors of Nature in response to the recent article (of which I was a co-author) on Pakistan’s higher education reform experiment.
I just wrote to Pervez requesting that in the interest of greater discussion on this important issue, he allow us to reproduce the letter here at ATP. He has graciously agreed.
We reproduce his letter, in full, here:
“Pakistan’s Reform Experiment” (Nature, V461, page 38, 3 September 2009) gives the impression of providing a factual balance sheet of Pakistan’s higher education under General Pervez Musharraf’s former government. Unfortunately, several critical omissions indicate a partisan bias.
Mention of the billions wasted on mindless prestige mega-projects is noticeably absent. Example: nine new universities were hastily conceived and partially constructed, but abandoned and finally scrapped after it became obvious that it was impossible to provide them with the most crucial ingredient – trained faculty. Similarly, fantastically expensive scientific equipment, imported with funds from the Higher Education Commission, remain hopelessly under-utilized many years later. They litter the country’s length and breadth. For instance, my university has been forced to house a “souped-up” Van de Graaf accelerator facility, purchased in 2005 with HEC funds. A research purpose is still being sought in 2009.
The authors conveniently choose not to mention that the 400% claimed increase in the number of publications was largely a consequence of giving huge payments to professors for publishing in international journals, irrespective of actual substance and quality. Not surprisingly these cash-per-paper injections had the effect of producing a plagiarism pandemic, one that is still out of control. In a country where academic ethics are poor and about a third of all students cheat in examinations, penalties for plagiarism by teachers and researchers are virtually non-existent.
Citing Thomson Scientific, the authors claim a large rise in the “relative impact” in some disciplines, based upon citation levels of papers published between 2003 and 2007. But did the authors try to eliminate self-citations (a deliberate ploy) from this count? If they had – as I did using an available option in the Thomson Scientific package – they might actually have found the opposite result.
While the authors laud the increase in the salaries of university professors by the HEC, they pay no attention to the disparities thus created. The salary of a full professor (after the raises) can be 20-30 times that of an average Pakistani school teacher. Money raining down from the skies has created a new dynamic as well. Naked greed is now destroying the moral fibre of Pakistan’s academia. Professors across the country are clamoring to lift even minimal requirements that could assure quality education.
This is happening in three critical ways. First, given the large prospective salary raises, professors are bent upon removing all barriers for their promotions by pressuring their university’s administration as well as the HEC. Second, they want to be able to take on more PhD students, whether these students have the requisite academic capacity or not. Having more students translates into proportionately more money in each professor’s pocket. Third, a majority wants the elimination of all international testing – such as the Graduate Record Examination administered from Princeton. These had been used as a metric for gauging student performance within the Pakistani system.
Pakistan’s failed experiment provides a counter example to the conventional wisdom that money is the most important element. Instead, an enormous cash infusion, used badly, has served to amplify problems rather than improve teaching and research quality. There is much that other developing countries can learn from our experience – and it is opposite to what the authors want us to conclude.
Dr. Hoodbhoy is a leading voice on science and education policy and has been the most prominent critic of the Pakistan Higher Education Commission (HEC) over the years. Personally, I can think of few who have been more committed to Pakistan’s higher education than him. For all of these reasons, I take his opinions very seriously, even when my own assessment might end up to be different from his, as it has been in this case
Since we have made our case in print and he has too, I will not go into rebuttals. Nor is that possible since the co-authors have not yet had a time to carefully and and collectively respond to this (the group was large, spread out across the globe, and deliberately structured to be diverse). But speaking strictly for myself, there are a number of points I would not disagree with (For example, in our article we have also been critical – although maybe not as much as Pervez would have liked us to be – of the domestic PhD program and the consequences of the incentives given). But that would not change my overall assessment. Our goal, as we saw it, was to look at the entirety of Pakistan’s higher education reform effort and, as honestly and as best as we could, to arrive at a collective assessment of the total impact (the good as well as the bad) in the very limited space we had.
Where our assessment does differ from Dr. Hoodbhoy’s, I think, is that while he clearly believes the Pakistan reform experiment to have “failed,” we believe that it is “too early to judge the outcome” but that some aspects of the experiment have and will give much better results than others. Where we do not differ is that like him (and I take the liberty of quoting from his email to me) we too “feel rather strongly on what’s needed for fixing our universities.” Our assessments may differ, but our goal is the same.
Importantly, we also agree that (and, again, I quote from his email), “its important to debate such issues.” It is in that spirit that I had asked Pervez to let us share his response here. A focus on how best to improve higher education in Pakistan is the core of all of our concerns, and was also the core of our recommendation in the paper “for an independent peer review of the HEC’s performance.” I hope that our readers can also help all of us focus much more on this very question which motivates all of us, Dr. Hoodbhoy, myself, and my co-authors: what is it that we have learnt so far and what is it that we should do in the future to strengthen and improve higher education in Pakistan.
Nadeem, you didn’t really see the primary point. Pervez Hoodbhoy is not just against the increase in the education budget in Pakistan. He is against everything in Pakistan. He has been blabbering on and on for decades – this bad, that bad, he bad, she bad – and yet for the brilliant physicist he supposedly is, one doesn’t see any notable physics related work being produced by him. Reminds me of that kaafi, “Aivee’n roz shaitaan nal larda, kaday nafs apnay naal lariya ee naiee’n”. The man has little credibility left. And I am not even one of those who calls out his questionable links to questionable political personalities with questionable objectives. I am only referring to what is in plain sight.
As for your Google search response, what bunkum! Pursuing that line of logic, we should banish all physical implements, tools and equipment from all labs and universities since everyone can look them up on google. Please go look at Seymour Papert’s extensive work on the importance of inculcating concepts in learners through physical reinforcement – touching, feeling, doing – not googling. Also look at Time O’Reilly’s Maker/DIY movement as a means to put science into practice. Physicality is important.
I think Pervez Hoodbhoy makes an excellent point. The waste was great and so much more could have been done with this. The raining of money not only created bad incentives in Pakistan, but now that the money will disappear it will create new problems as peoples habits have been spoiled and the resources have disappeared.
Was finally able to read the full article and editorial, through my university library. Seemed to me that the Nature editorial was partly a rebuttal to the article, saying that the reform was actually better than the article made it look like, because things were difficult. I liked the article much better than the editorial frankly, because it was more balanced.
By the way, I should say that since the major expenditure was on human resources on PhD training and most of these are still studying, it is too early to judge definitively. If these PhDs come back and start teaching in Pakistani univeristies then things will certainly start changing dramatically and the results of this reform could in fact be very far reaching. But we cannot know that for at least another 5-10 years.
It was good that the silliest ideas,, like the regional univeristies, were scrapped before the real big expenditures on them could be made.
In general I agree more with Hoodbhoy, whatever the achievements might be the waste has been tremendous and a great opportunity to rally change things big time was wasted by Atta ur Rahman.
But right now I must disassociate myself from others like Nadeem Ahsan whose crazy arguments are only serving to discredit Dr. Hoodbhoy. I am sure that Dr. Hoodbhoy woudl also dissasociate himself from the crazy conspiracy theories of Nadeem Ahsan.
So, Dr. Atta ur Rahman published in Nature 5 years ago therefore he has some magical control over this prestigious journal now and can force it to o whatever it wants. Or are you trying to discredit the journal now … yes, yes, yes, it sa global conspiracy against Pakistan and Islam and everything that they are publishing these articles that differ with your opinion. Of course, why else would a “Western” journal be interested in Pakistans education. And how mysterious that someone woudl like to publish in Nature. Afterall, why woudl you when you can publish in Akhbar-i-Jahan.
Mannnn.. please stop inhaling, whatever you are smoking!
By the way, I just checked, even Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy published in Nature as recently as June this year … 3 months ago… so, I guess he has even more clout there than Dr. Atta who published there 5 years ago.
Give me a break please… please don’t use these fundo arguments (like, “how many Americans are interested in knowing more about Pakistan’s Higher Education system through Nature Magazine”) to discredit the arguments reasonable arguments like those being made by Pervez Hoodbhoy.
ComplainBhoy says that keeping a VDG Accelerator in a showcase is good thing because people get to see it is perhaps the most bizzare defense I have seen so far. Some times people have such a weak position that they think they can get away by giving the most absurd explanations.
If students want to know what a VDGA is and what is does, it costs nothing because all that you need to do is a Google search and voila, you have all the information in the world on the VDGA.
According to Dr Hoodbhoy, more than $500 Million vanished over 6 years. Where did all this money go? What do we have to show for it?
Do we have a list of universities and names of students who were admitted to these schools for PhD programs? How many graduated? How many will come back?
So many ‘microwaveable’ universities were born and died very soon. Who benefited from all the spending?
This smells like a major scandal to me. Will someone investigate and get to the bottom of this ‘Attagate’?
Where is Atta now? The fishy thing about this article is that in 2004, Dr Atta Ur Rehman wrote an Editorial in Nature magazine about enlightened moderation. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7015/fu ll/432273a.html
Folks, does anyone remember enlightened moderation, Musharraf’s drumbeat during his years.
And now these authors have written a full article in the same magazine???? This begs the question – Did AUR use his clout with Nature magazine to get this article published or Nature has genuine sympathies towards Muslim countries. Just raising a red flag.
Many questions go through my mind.
1. First, why was this article written. For whom?
2.Second, if as the authors claim, this was for the consumption of an international audience, how many people in overseas countries read Nature? Unless you are a paying subscriber, you cannot read it for free.
3. Third, how many Americans are interested in knowing more about Pakistan’s Higher Education system through Nature Magazine. Is the logical place for such an article not the NY Times or the WSJ?
4.Fourth, is it merely coincidence that Atta UR published an article 5 years ago in the same magazine?
5. Fifth, can the authors explain how and why this particular article appeared in Nature?
And many many more…