Welcome to Jurassic University

On November 1, a local paper reported the proceedings of a three-day meeting of the vice chancellors (VCs) of Pakistan’s public and private universities in Bhurban that was also attended by Minister of Federal Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mahmood. The moot concluded with a rejection of recent significant changes to the HEC’s undergraduate and PhD policies by an overwhelming majority of attendees.

Their objections to the undergraduate and PhD policies were threefold: First, recent policies were developed behind closed doors. Second, they did not take into consideration any input from stakeholders. Third, the policies were developed by external (read: foreign) consultants.

Let us put aside for a minute the irony of someone rejecting policy changes under the pretext that they were developed by foreign consultants who were parachuted in, while themselves enjoying a junket generously supported by the British Council. It is also worth remembering that many of the best universities operating in Pakistan right now were all set up with guidance from foreign experts and inspiration from foreign institutes – IBA, LUMS, GIKI, NUST immediately spring to mind while others, like the University of Haripur, are being developed on the same model.

I am, of course, a strong believer in informing and engaging stakeholders in policy discussion. The thing is that the stakeholders here are not VCs. A college student I talked to told me something to the effect of “a bachelor’s degree is a bachelor’s degree, regardless of whether it is a two-year or four-year program.” Do students know what prospects await them after a two-year ‘bachelor’s’ programme versus a four-year one? Not only have students been kept away from this debate, they also remain blissfully uninformed of the facts.

When matters were put to a vote 198 VCs – all but two – voted to reverse recent changes to the undergraduate and PhD policies. If that happens, it will reverse a number of progressive higher education policies the HEC introduced over the past few years.

Three important policies that would be rolled back are: a) the redesignation of two-year BA/BSc programmes as associate bachelors programmes and requiring BA/BSc programmes to be four years in duration; b) the introduction of more flexible bachelor's programme structures that allow freshmen to explore their interests in the first year and declare their major in the second year; and c) softening the requirement of having an MA/MSc degree prior to enrolling into a PhD programme for exceptionally prepared applicants.

On the first point of four-year bachelor’s degrees, India, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavian countries, most Western and Central European countries and Western and Central African countries colonised by them have predominantly three-year bachelor’s programmes. Most of the rest of the world, including the US, Canada, Mexico, China and the Middle East, and recently Pakistan have four-year bachelor’s programmes. North Korea, Turkmenistan, Sudan, Angola, Sierra Leone, Cuba and most of South America have five-year bachelor’s programmes, and Chile even has a six-year bachelor’s programme. Resurrecting the Pakistani two-year bachelor’s degree which has long gone extinct in the rest of the world is like bringing back the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park – it is a bad idea.

About 15 years ago, there was public debate in the UK about compressing standard three-year bachelor’s programmes into intensive two-year programmes, not by reducing contents but by eliminating almost all vacation days (especially summer break). The thinking was that this would allow students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds to enter the workforce a year earlier. However, the shadow minister for higher education of the time, now prime minister, Boris Johnson had this to say on the issue, “It would be tragic if degrees were to be 'dumbed down' to meet some arbitrary target.” In the end the proposal was scrapped when it was realised that the intensive nature of such compressed programs would deny students the opportunity to work alongside their studies. That would have shut out those who were supposed to have benefitted from compressed programmes – students who need to work to fund their education.

The second sticking point for VCs here was the introduction of more flexibly structured bachelor’s programmes, which allow students to sample courses from a greater breadth in the first year. This allows a degree of exploration to students who are not completely certain about what programme they want to go into after graduating high school. A year on a university campus can change minds and gives an opportunity to discover previously unconsidered paths by interacting with seniors, professors and counsellors. That is how a lot of the best universities in the world have been doing it for decades.

Think back to your 18-year-old self and ask yourself: when you graduated high-school how ‘certain’ were you about what you wanted to do for your future? Allowing students to declare their major after their first year (even later – albeit at the cost of a delayed graduation) is a small step towards a more liberal education.

Yet, some VCs are demanding that students lock in their ‘specialisation’, their programme, before entering university with little to no possibility of change if they discover down the road that they would much rather major in something else. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were capable of learning how to operate a door handle, but it seems this simple step forward to get with the times and the world is too much for them to comprehend.

The third sticking point for VCs was the recent change to the HEC’s PhD policy that gives universities the added flexibility of admitting graduates from four-year BA/BSc programmes directly to PhD programmes without an MA/MSc if the admissions committee deems a candidate sufficiently prepared. Again, a practice adopted by several programmes in more developed higher education systems.

This episode demonstrates the ossified ideas of so many university leaders and a resistance to adopting even the most basic reforms even if it makes us quite literally the last country in the world hanging on to old ways of doing things.

Everything these VCs voted for says one thing: “We want to go back to the past.” How that can possibly improve anything I do not know and, probably, neither do they. In the face of such attitudes, is it any wonder that those tasked with reforming and developing higher education would grow impatient and ultimately choose to push through basic reforms, even if it means doing so over the objections of dinosaurs.

I have no doubt that many of last week’s TLP protesters in central Punjab, the most educated and developed province, must have had more than just a high-school education. Gainfully employed people living settled lives with families do not drop everything and leave behind their livelihoods in such large numbers to go on days and weeks long marches and protests. Yet, the education many of them received was not enough to give them a shot at the kind of life many in Pakistan aspire to.

That march should also be a wakeup call for universities to start delivering relevant education and skills and chip away at the number of unemployed and underemployed youths with paper degrees in their hands but no useful skills. If they do not know what that entails, the least they can do is not stand in the way of those who do.

All three recent HEC policy changes (four-year bachelor’s degree, flexible undergraduate programmes and the option to let universities admit prepared undergraduates to PhD programmes directly) are progressive policies. It is my impression that those opposing them and standing in their way have made this a matter of ego because they had to be dragged along kicking and screaming. And now it looks like rationality, common sense and the welfare of students have been thrown to the wind, just for spite and obvious business interests. It is time to leave the dinosaurs behind on Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna and join the rest of the world if that is what it takes to do right by Pakistan’s Gen Z.

The writer (she/her) is the technical adviser to the MoFEPT. Views are her own.