While the Single National Curriculum is increasingly being introduced in Pakistan, concerns remain over the state of postgraduate studies in the country. Not all but some of Pakistan’s brightest minds pursue postgraduate study abroad, attracted by initiatives such as the Commonwealth Scholarship which funds Pakistanis to study in the UK.
On August 27th, a seminar organised by Pakistani postgraduate students was held at the High Commission. Entitled “The Nation Builders of Tomorrow,” the impetus behind it was to create a platform for researchers and PhD students of Pakistani origin to come together.
The event included speeches from Pakistani academics that study and work in UK universities, detailing how they came from humble beginnings to some of the world’s top institutions. Shahida Butt, a PhD biosciences student aiming to find a non-antibiotic treatment for tuberculosis was one of the organisers. Originally from Islamabad, she now studies at the University of Birmingham.
The underlying problem highlighted at the seminar was that there is not enough guidance for Pakistanis to pursue PhDs. This is in part because those top students who go abroad and could provide that guidance often do not return, mainly because they fear they will not secure a job fit for their level of education and so their research would seem like an unnecessary use of time.
An article written last year in The Monitor by Muddassar A. Iqbal explored the “Brain Drain Phenomenon” in Pakistan, whereby the high-flyers who do a majority of the work
are among those most likely to leave when that company reaches a setback.
In the case of prospective researchers, this matches the concerns raised in the seminar. That the kind of challenges and support that a top researcher craves is not currently offered in Pakistan, so they will seek it elsewhere.
To address this issue then, these national-level seminars will be designed to encourage networking. Individually, it is difficult to achieve educational change within Pakistan if students work alone. But, collectively, issues can be raised with a shared voice which is more difficult to ignore.
For some, the current mindset within Pakistani academia is the obstacle to improvement. This includes more trivial matters, like bad time-management, to more serious concerns, like a lack of support for the mental health of researchers and the nepotism within some institutional admissions in dictating who becomes a researcher and who does not.
The hope is thus that the good practices taught in UK universities will be adopted by Pakistani researchers and transferred back to Pakistan. Then, not only can the culture be changed from top to bottom, but postgraduates will be more inclined to remain in Pakistan and thus contribute to further development and prosperity.
The Pakistani researchers in the UK clearly want to give back to their country and make a contribution to its intellectual culture. This initiative thus seems like an important step, not only in encouraging a greater uptake of postgraduate studies, but also to achieve greater retention of researchers within Pakistan. To be clear, this is not about Westernising Pakistani education, which has long had great minds in its own right, with the likes of Iqbal and Manto in the arts through to Salam in science. This is about applying ethical and nurturing research practices and integrity to foster a high level of research within Pakistan for its own benefit.
The writer is a researcher in the UK and is soon to begin her PhD. She tweets MaryFloraHunter