Coming of Age: the need for a social contract of higher education institutions with Pakistani Society
by Ali Qadir(1)

posted: April 10, 2002

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You are Here, for Better or for Worse
The report of the Pakistan Task Force on Improvement of Higher Education(2) (2002) estimates that of a population of 140 million in Pakistan, 18 million are in the age cohort of 17 to 23 years, eligible for tertiary education. Of these 18 million, only 475,000 (or about 2.6%) are actually enrolled in higher education institutions. This proportion is among the lowest in the world: India (in 1990) had a tertiary enrolment ratio of 6.2%, while Iran (in 1994) had 12.7%.

It gets worse.

The now-famous World Bank / UNESCO report on Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise(3) aptly describes the economic importance of higher education to developing countries thus:

The world economy is changing as knowledge supplants physical capital as the source of present (and future) wealth…. As knowledge becomes more important, so does higher education…. The quality of knowledge generated within higher education institutions, and its accessibility to the wider economy, is becoming increasingly critical to national competitiveness…. This poses a serious challenge to the developing world…. Quite simply, many developing countries will need to work much harder just to maintain their position, let alone to catch up (p: 12).

The globalizing economy places a premium on the breadth, depth and adaptability of knowledge. As global economic activity moves its emphasis from purely manufacturing to the service industry, countries increasingly require a minimum mass of people with competitive knowledge, skills and entrepreneurship to develop. The World Bank report (TFHE) stresses the threat / opportunity facing developing countries, particularly as they enter into global competition with other nations who are investing in higher education.

The Higher Education Triple-Whammy
Pakistan's investment in public sector higher education (catering to over 85% of all enrolled tertiary students) fell from 19% of the educational development budget in 1972 to 10% in 1988, despite an overall increase in the educational budget. The country is actually spending less and less on higher education even though it continues to pump in more money into primary education (with questionable results). As salt on the wound, the cost of higher education in Pakistan is far higher than comparable countries (TFHE). Pakistan's expenditure per student on tertiary education was 123 percent of GNP per capita in 1990, and 94 percent in 1996. By contrast, the S Asian averages were 91.4 percent of regional GNP per capita in 1990 and 72.8 percent in 1996. So, Pakistanis actually pay more for tertiary education than they can afford compared to other developing countries in the region, who end up producing more capable and competitive graduates(4).

The second higher education twist is what some have referred to as "educational apartheid". Parallel systems have evolved to prepare different classes in society for different levels of education and, hence, for different positions within society. Private sector tertiary education, although still lagging behind regional standards, involves a greater investment in students and produces better graduates to compete in the market.

The growing disparity between a minority elite and majority dispossessed in the country is expressing itself in various ways in the country, some of them violent. Security experts have argued convincingly, and sometimes with empirical evidence that the rise of militancy in the country is a direct, virtually inevitable consequence of developmental inequality, particularly in the education sector.

A third, slightly more complex, argument can be made with respect to the definition of Pakistani "society" and where it is going. In a sense, the TFHE brings out the fact that the "highly" educated are now forming a global elite, drawing their strength from a globalizing, service-based economy and engaged in defining where humankind goes in the next generation or two. Part of this definition is to place a premium on higher education itself, at which the TFHE points out the promise for developing countries who begin to invest in higher education now. But at a deeper level, the well-recognized cultural crisis Pakistani society is facing now emphasizes the need for intellectual direction and leadership, which may be provided by the "highly" educated.

This last can be placed in the context of socio-linguists, such as Dr. Tariq Rahman(5), who argue convincingly of the social distinction inherent in a literacy-based society. The extension of this argument, which is what TFHE propounds, is that a society based on knowledge will create its own social distinctions on the basis of higher education. "Social distinctions" take the form of power structures embedded in societal norms and transmissions, constructing a definition of "the way things are".

Almost as an addendum, the post-modern condition of ideas needs to be added to the higher education challenge looming above Pakistani society. Today's world, characterized by the unprecedented rate of information and communication flows, has reduced the half-life of popular concepts to about the time it takes to switch to a new cable channel or say "www". The speed at which knowledge is produced and disseminated is itself a feature of this age, more than just the variety of ideas. In this post-modern feeding frenzy, more and more emphasis is being placed on so-called "process skills": communication, adaptability, negotiation-ability and the like, to complement a basic knowledge set. Everybody is forced to compete in the world, whether from their "home" or outside. Pakistani graduates, too, must compete in the world armed with a basic set of knowledge and process skills, if they are to adapt to this pace.

Headlights in the Haze
The triple-whammy is a fact. Higher education institutions, as preservers, creators and transmitters of knowledge are more important than ever before. There is no doubt that Pakistani higher education institutions have to reform themselves radically to meet the challenge, or submerge the nation in yet another global tidal wave.

In a society fighting for survival as it is, there is little hope that Pakistan can help define global events and thoughts over the next couple of generations. What we can do is to decide whether to sink or swim.

The list of problems in the higher education sector, particularly with a view to coping with the global challenge, is legion. Wide-ranging reform is needed just to bring institutions somewhere in the neighborhood of international compatibility. A very promising beginning has been made in the Steering Committee(6) on Higher Education, as a follow-up to the Task Force on Improvement of Higher Education and the Study Group on Science & Technology. The Steering Committee is developing a comprehensive implementation plan for the recommendations of the Task Force and Study Group, aimed at improving the governance, management, resource handling and academic quality of higher education institutions.

In the short time before it, however, the Steering Committee is (wisely) aiming at the most pressing issues at the University level in priority. The Steering Committee and related efforts are based on an assumed commonality of a broader vision among the change agents and just fixing what is obviously broken. What such efforts can't do without developing significant public momentum, is to initiate a debate on where Pakistan as a society places higher education, and what role higher education has to: firstly, define how Pakistan engages with globalization; secondly, influence our domestic power structures; and thirdly, use a basic set of knowledge and skills to benefit from the rapidly changing global environment. The onus of that definition belongs to civil society.

In this respect, a powerful argument is being made in American institutions, as highlighted by Derek Bok in Beyond the Ivory Tower(7). Bok traces the history of academic freedom in higher education to the transition of American universities from clergy-dominated, socially isolated organizations in the nineteenth century to industry-led/funded institutions with a stronger pedagogical component in the early twentieth century to a civic-led academia in the late twentieth century. At the same time, Bok identifies a number of factors that led to America, as a nation, placing a premium on higher education and scaling up enrolment by significant orders of magnitude, including huge influxes from the government to lead and support a variety of war efforts. The end result, he argues, is the emergence of academia from an insignificant elite to a socially responsible civil society leading the nation into globalization.

The critical feature of higher education is thus that institutions no longer simply serve their students or some abstract Truth. Rather, the very scale of these institutions along with some of the other factors, mean that these institutions serve their society, however they choose to define "their" society. Hence the growing emphasis on research and training in partnership with the civic, public and private sectors.

Going back to tertiary enrolment ratios, then, perhaps a more interesting indicator of the state of higher education in a country is tertiary student enrollment per 100,000 inhabitants of the country. Pakistan's 475,000 students mean a ratio of about 339, compared to 5,339 in USA (in 1995), 613 in India (1995) and 1,533 in Iran (1995).

Actually, of the 475,000 students enrolled in institutions of higher learning in Pakistan, about half are receiving education with absolutely no compatibility with internationally recognized standards, including a basic level of knowledge, skills or general awareness. Even an optimistic figure of 250,000 students receiving degrees with some quality, drops the ratio to about 178.

The point, then, is that higher education institutions in Pakistan must not only be "patched up", but must also be situated in an appropriate context with respect to what goals the Pakistani society sets for itself. Any such arrangement, relying on the interaction and cooperation of various sectors and sections of society and, more importantly, any such effort which must be led by the civic sector, require some form of a contract to be drawn up. A social contract, such as that which makes a nation into a state through a constitution, is needed. A contract between higher education institutions and society is not proposed as a static solution in and of itself, but to initiate a process through which Pakistani society comes to grips with the rest of the world's direction, and then decides how it is to cope. A national debate can be encouraged, led by civil society itself, to define the relationship of higher education institutions with the rest of society: the roles and responsibilities of both.

The Pakistani academia never actually got into an ivory tower - it was more like a paper plane - but they were, and still remain, isolated from the rest of the country and indeed the rest of the world. Recent political events in Pakistan are a case in point. The small federal cabinet constituted by the military government (different from a martial law in some vague, undefined way), although composed of professed technocratic experts, has only one academician (loosely defined at that). The military take-over on 12 October, 1999 was not formally debated, discussed or addressed at a single campus across the country. Not one university held even one workshop, seminar or conference on the direction of Pakistani governance. Even after September 11, and the consequent unilateral decisions of the Chief Executive, not a single campus held a single major event to debate the looming crisis or Pakistan's new opportunities.

Which is not to say that these issues are not being discussed in Pakistan, even institutionally. Its just that those with the responsibility of leading the nation into the globalizing 21st century are … simply not interested. As a result, civil society has distanced itself even further from universities and colleges, parents dread the time they will have to subject their children to the system, and students and faculty both are looking for the shortest, cheapest ride out.

Endgame
As universities and colleges in Pakistan thus prepare themselves to lead the nation into a positive, beneficial engagement with globalization, they must relate more closely with the society that is coping with globalization. Overcoming this alienation, it is being argued, will require pro-active steps towards a clear understanding of what role, responsibility and authority higher education has within society. For this, it has been suggested, the civic sector can lead a process of developing a social contract between higher education and society at large.

The bottom line:
Society will care about higher education if higher education cares about society

Footnotes:
1) Presently working with the Steering Committee on Higher Education, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad. aqadir73@yahoo.com
2) Task Force on the Improvement of Higher Education in Pakistan, 2002. Final report: Challenges and Opportunities [Islamabad: Government of Pakistan]
3)Task Force on Higher Education, 2000. Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise [Washington D.C.: World Bank]. Available at www.tfhe.net
4) The Asiaweek 2000 ranking of Asian Universities lists only two Pakistani management schools in the top 50 in Asia, both private schools, one at 23 and another at 50. The same ranking places only three Pakistani institutions in the top 35 S&T graduate schools, of which two are private and one run by the Armed Forces. No Pakistani institution AT ALL makes it into the top 70 multi-disciplinary universities of Asia. http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/features/universities2000/
5)Rahman, Tariq, 2002. Language, Education & Culture [Islamabad: Oxford University Press]
6)www.sche.gov.pk
7)Bok, Derek, 1982. Beyond the Ivory Tower: Social Responsibilities of the Modern University [Cambridge: Harvard University Press]