While they pontificate about these ‘successes’, they avoid mention of the innumerable crises on the horizon. Among them is the absolutely diabolical state of our public universities. Put simply, they are on the verge of going bust, and the only concrete public policy of note is to let it all just happen while preaching the virtues of a ‘new’ corporate management style.

Public universities exist to ensure that no one is denied the opportunity to acquire higher education because they cannot afford to pay for it. Young people admitted that the best public universities are in principle guaranteed a reasonable quality of education, and good employment prospects after graduation.

Today, these basic precepts have been completely superseded. The majority of public universities now enrol at least as many ‘self-financing’ students than those who qualify for highly subsidised education. These self-financing students pay semester fees as high as Rs150,000. Fewer and fewer of them get access to university-run hostels, and those that do suffer from internet blackouts, low-quality food, and pathetic supplies of water, gas and other basic amenities.

Our public universities are on the verge of going bust.

Meanwhile, the quality of education in our public universities has plummeted, particularly since the Higher Education Commission introduced financial incentives to encourage faculty publications. Plagiarism is endemic, and in many departments the majority of courses are taught by visiting rather than permanent faculty.

Finally, it is no longer true that a degree from even the best public university represents a good chance of landing a permanent job and social mobility more generally. Thousands of graduates compete with one another for every single government job that is advertised. Private sector empl­oyers prefer private university graduates. Stude­nts who have acquired research degr­ees are resorting to daily wage/ online work.

As far as university teachers go, one would have to be living under a rock to be unaware that more and more faculty are regularly on the roads — some striking — to get their salaries paid on time. Visiting faculty members sometimes go for a year or more without pay. In Sindh, a large number of faculty are currently protesting the outlandish plan to institutionalise a new university management structure in which career bureaucrats become vice chancellors and academic and quality considerations become irrelevant. 

This is just a symptom of a larger and more insidious policy shift. The state has in effect reneged on its responsibility to provide quality, affordable education. Funding for public universities has declined markedly over the past few years as successive regimes have acceded to the neoliberalisation of higher education. It was reported a few months ago that international lending agencies are, in fact, instructing the government to pull the plug on funding higher education entirely. Which means taking in more fee-paying students, phasing out permanent employees, and even treating university land as prime real estate to be leased or sold to the highest bidder.

This is the same mantra that we have been sold ad nauseam about any and all public institutions for decades now — ei­­ther privatise them entirely, or corporatise them so that the mythical investor/ donor gets to do as they please while the fundamental premises of public service go straight out the window.

The short-term implications are playing out in front of our eyes with the everyday functioning of the public university more and more strained with each passing day. Even more remarkable are the longer-term implications. The median age of our population is 23. We are fed tales daily about syncing ourselves with the knowledge economy.

But while education rapidly metamorphoses into a profit-loss enterprise, most young people, including those who are acquiring degrees from a rapidly expanding private university circuit, are being sold empty dreams. There is no plan to generate employment, let alone quality education. The only apparent plan is to (quasi) privatise higher education and let the meltdown play out.

In a sense this is just a microcosm of the country at large. Spew out big fancy words under the garb of public policy, beg for money from the usual suspects, and then allow our gracious donors to lean on our own (largely disinterested and often incompetent) bureaucrats — including the khakis — to sell our kids down the river.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

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