Students as clients

It has been an accepted fact that illiteracy is the mother of social problems. For countries like Pakistan the situation is further aggravated when literacy is defined in terms of the head count, that is those who are able to write their names only. On the other side the world has redefined literacy and knowledge and so literacy skills are seen as the very bases of informed decision-making and personal empowerment of the masses.
Unfortunately, our literacy rate is very low (even lower than a few African countries). Even then we are spending just 2.3 percent of our total GDP on education. In order to relieve itself from this responsibility, our successive governments have given a free hand to the private sector to run educational institutions on a commercial basis. In today’s environment, teachers are being warned by private university managements that students are customers. Indirectly, teachers are being clearly told that ‘students pay us while we pay you’ so students should not be annoyed.
Muhammad Iftikhar Masaud
Lahore