Higher education remains a subject of continuous debate in the academic circles and also in the Pakistani media. Often, bizarrely enough, regulation or administrative measures instead of academic reforms process are proposed to fix the problems of higher education. Some pundits profess the need to open up a university in every district, not realising the scarcity of qualified faculty that makes things daunting for even well-established institutions. Others suggest handing over of the universities to professional managers since administration is not academics’ cup of tea.

One may suggest a comparative analysis to be carried out between the institutions run by professional managers and those managed by academics to help dispel this deep-seated delusion.

Lately, the Punjab government has become obsessed with the idea of installing two to three pro-vice chancellors in every university ostensibly to impart them valuable training as to administering the institution(s) of higher learning. It does not realise the instability that such a scheme, if comes to fruition, will cause. Universities will become sites where practical politics will be played out in a true Machiavellian sense.

Just to absolve the government from the responsibility of running educational institutions, private entrepreneurs are being encouraged to invest in education; thus it has been made into a profitable business. Public-private partnership presents a stark exemplification of this line of thinking. Mushroom growth of private universities has virtually reduced higher education into a joke.

Despite the fact that universities are being multiplied, one wonders whether any debate or deliberation has ever taken place on a subject of vital importance --the ‘idea of a University’ in the context of Pakistan. Put in straight terms, what exactly is meant when a university is ‘imagined’ here as an institution for under-graduate and graduate studies? Where do we trace, if at all, the genealogy of a Pakistani University? The question becomes intriguing, given our obsessive bonding with Islamic past? In a situation replete with contradictions, what do we expect from a university?

The state of higher education is marred with inconsistency in thought, evidently reflected in practice. The question forming the inaugural part of our inquiry is ‘what is a University’?

The etymological roots of the word "university" take us to the Latin phrase universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". A Latin Dictionary by Charlton T. Lewis reveals that universitas originally refers to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation etc." Like other guilds, universities were self-regulating and determined the qualifications of their members.

A very vital aspect of the university was the notion of academic freedom. The first ever such institution was the University of Bologna in Italy (established in 1088) which adopted academic charter (the Constitutio Habita) in 1158 whereby "the right of a travelling scholar to unhindered passage in the interests of education" was guaranteed. Peter Watson in his hefty volume Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud claims that charter as the origin of "academic freedom".

On September 18, 1988, 430 university rectors signed the Magna Charta Universitatum, marking the 900^th anniversary of Bologna’s foundation and endorsed that gospel of academic freedom. All said and done, from twelfth century to this era of postmodernism, "academic freedom" has been the abiding feature of the Western Universities. They have remained independent of kings, emperors or any kind of direct religious authority.

Europe underwent torrid times in the 17^th century which was rife with events that adversely affected universities. Wars, plague, famine, regicide and changes in religious power and structure often had ruinous effects on the societies that lent support to universities. Then internal strife within the universities, like student brawls and absentee professors, destabilised these institutions. Despite these trying times, universities managed to retain their autonomy and academic freedom. Even when nationalism had pervaded European polities to the very core, autonomy and academic freedom in the universities remained the cardinal principle.

Regarding the ‘Idea of a University’, a known historian of Edinburgh University furnishes three models, Newman’s ‘Idea of a University’, Humboldian model and The Robbins-Oxbridge model. The phrase ‘idea of the university’ was coined during the reforms of Wilhelm von Humboldt in Prussia (modern day Germany). But we will focus on Newman’s model first, which can be traced to John Henry Newman’s series of lectures that he gave at Dublin in the 1850s. He described the university as a place of ‘universal knowledge’ in which specialised training, though valid in itself, was subordinated to the pursuit of a broader liberal education.

Other apostles of culture like Mathew Arnold tended to draw on Newman’s assertion and emphasised that "education should aim at producing generalists rather than narrow specialists, and that non-vocational subjects in arts or pure science could train the mind in ways applicable to a wide range of jobs".

Starting with the University of Berlin, founded in 1810, the ‘Humboldtian’ university became a model for the rest of Europe and, by 1914, German Universities were generally ranked as the best in the entire world. Humboldtian model, in fact, shaped the research universities of the United States, which head the international league in contemporary times. That model had a few ‘interlocking features’, marked by ‘the deep forces of the age’ including nationalism, secularisation, the growth of the modern state, and the shift of social power from aristocracies to the middle classes, on the basis of merit, intellectual expertise, and professionalism.

The central principle, that Humboldtian model unequivocally underscored, was the ‘the union of teaching and research’. The function of the university was to advance knowledge by original and critical investigation, not just to transmit the past legacies or to teach skills. But research had to be ancillary to teaching and the specialised research which became the hallmark of the German universities was a later development.

It was only in the last century that research became a vital activity in itself, contributing to industrial progress, military strength, and social welfare, and requiring collaborative rather than individual effort. That model is worth HEC’s consideration though it has been transformed quite radically by now.

In 1963, Robbins Committee on higher education advanced the ‘Robbins principle’ in UK, which advocated that university places should be available to all who were qualified for them by ability and attainment. It defined four objectives essential to any properly balanced system: (a) ‘instruction in skills’ but universities must also promote the general powers of the mind; (b) to produce ‘not merely specialists but rather cultivated men and women’; (c) teaching should not separated from the advancement of learning and the search for truth; and (d) the transmission of a common culture and common standards of citizenship’.

Looking at the Pakistani universities, one might ask what model is being followed here. Do we have any ‘idea of a University’? That will be dealt with in the next column.