Will dissolution of HEC directly affect middle class students???

There are currently some counter arguments that dissolution of HEC is not really a problem of middle class students. The first argument is that HEC has worked totally on improvement of quaternary education and producing PhD scholars and has not given any attention towards eroding quality of pure/basic sciences and lower education.

.

The answer lies in the question itself. First of all, let us make it clear that what is the mandate of HEC and what are the functions that it performs. Its first function is to regulate the standards of universities. Without a central body such as HEC, and without its quality control, we would be seeing mushroom growth of fake universities of two rooms each in every street where it would be possible to literally buy degrees. These fake universities would also be offering bachelor programs and the standard of education even at the bachelor level would really deteriorate. Without HEC, any industrialist or capitalist would be able to establish universities as a money making business and the standard of education offered by these universities would be quite low in the absence of a regulatory authority. Currently a graduate from Karachi University is considered far more superior than a graduate from many commercial universities. This happens because HEC ranks all the universities across Pakistan considering a lot of factors and the standard of education. In the absence of HEC, a student from Karachi, who has studied hard all his life to secure good marks to eventually get admission in Karachi university would be rated exactly similar to someone who has not studied hard ever in life, but has money and means to buy degrees from potential low standard universities.



Secondly, HEC does not only focus on PhDs, it also regulates the M.Phil and Masters programs and the number of Masters and M.Phil students has also increased manifold since the establishment of this authority. These graduates of these masters, M.Phil and PhD programs teach at Bachelor levels. So if we do not have quality masters, Mphil and Phd scholars, the teaching faculty at bachelor levels will impart education of low quality and this standard of bachelor education will also fall. The bachelor graduates often teach at primary and secondary level and consequently the level of education at this primary and secondary level will also deteriorate.



The third function of HEC is to grant scholarships to deserving students for masters and Mphil and Phd education. Before the establishment of HEC, very few middle class families could afford the cost of education of these levels. The scholarship programs offered by the government were availed only by the affluent and resourceful families who had connections. What HEC has done is, that it now awards scholarships for various programs strictly on merit for middle class families. In the absence of HEC, the corrupt politicians would be free to award any scholarship to their own families and children.



The fourth function of HEC is to validate and verify the degrees. There are many universities abroad where rich families and rich kids can literally buy their degrees and a term of party schools has been coined for such universities. People who can afford to buy these degrees, come back to Pakistan and get higer positions in job market usurping the rights of deserving students in Pakistan. We all have seen the issue of fake degrees of legislators recently, in the absence of a central body such as HEC who else could have pointed out which were the fake degrees and which were the real ones.



One more function of HEC is to promote scientific research. Without scientific research flourishing, the number of jobs available for graduates of pure sciences would decrease even more. Scientific research is directly responsible to assist industry and agriculture and opens avenues for jobs for graduates of pure/ basic sciences. Currently HEC is funding research project in the field of chemistry to generate cheap fuel, in the field of agricultural sciences to produce cheap seeds etc. Being an underdeveloped country, people of our country need these researches even more to increase agricultural growth etc. Without a central body such as HEC, these research projects and the activity being generated by them would die out.



Another function is HEC is to verify and validate the degrees of those students who go abroad for employment after completion of their graduation or masters education. After the dissolution of HEC, it would be almost impossible for students from our country to seek jobs abroad as there would be no authority to verify and validate these degrees.



All these factors mean nothing to affluent people, and are most important to middle class people because rich families can easily afford to go abroad and study and the standards of local universities does not really bother them, so the perception that it is not out problem does not seem correct to me.



Another perception that the improving the standard of lower education is more important for us and Karachiites, also does not seem correct to me. We can cite the examples of Jews who are so few in number and are yet controlling the whole economy of United States. Their number is probably only in hundreds of thousands and yet they are controlling the policies which affect billions of people al over the world. This is only possible because they are a very highly educated nation, and as a result they automatically occupy all the important positions and then make policies which directly benefit their nation. How thousands of jews can dominate billions of Muslims, how a country so small such as Israel can export fighter jets and the wealthy countries of Middle East despite enormous wealth are becoming dependent on them is only possible because Jews give extreme importance to higher education and research.



This last argument that standard of lower education has gone down is again self contradictory. It is not the mandate of HEC to regulate lower education in the first place, but in the absence of HEC the standard of lower education would go even more down as there would be no quality teachers available to teach at these levels.



In my opinion, and from my understanding, I believe that MQM does realize the importance of higher education and that is precisely the reason that it has proposed and is establishing Nazir Hussain University. It is also important that simultaneously the quality of primary and secondary education should be improved.





Dr. Fahad Azam