Boggling higher education in Pakistan

Asmatullah Khan

Higher education is the prime input for the acceleration of technological, scientific and research oriented skill in the country to achieve the objective of speedy economic development and higher productivity. Discoveries, innovations, scientifically accelerated socio –economic development, modern research and latest industrial and agricultural technologies are the outcomes of the productive research oriented higher education. The better is the quality of higher education; the better would be the outcome of research in multiple fields.

Higher education in a country has a direct correlation with the accelerated socio –economic and technological development and also with the human development. Therefore, higher education has an immense role in developing human resources, research and technological knowledge for the productive utilization of the factors of production. Computer, artificial intelligence and software engineering are other new productive fields for the acceleration of marginal productivity and revenue generation. Hence, hammering the higher educational facilities will certainly slow down the tangible returns and productive research activities in a country like Pakistan.    

Today, comparing the socio –economic development and growth rate of the developed and developing countries on account of their advanced higher education and productive research, the developed countries have achieved distinction in speedy socio –economic and technological development.  It is because of their advanced higher education, applied computer technologies and multiple researches based growing industrial production. Developed countries are leading examples on account of their leading innovative achievements on account of their quality higher education and research facilities. Their increasing per acre yield, potentially higher marginal productivity and rapidly changing technological and scientific outcome are certainly the essence of their innovations through advanced higher education and regular research activities. All such rapid revolutionary changes in the said countries in the form of innovations, discoveries applications of advanced research methods, have certainly made changes in their multiple productivities, minimizing their production cost, increasing living standards and standardizations of their industrial and agricultural productivities. The scientific development and application of their modern technologies have potentially multiplied ten times their agriculture and industrial productivities and also their defense requirements, and industrial sectors. Resultantly, their income has also been increased tremendously, which has certainly raised the standard of living and purchasing powers of their inhabitants.

Their monopolies and domination over the latest defense and health equipment’s, and new innovative techniques in the industrial, agricultural and human development sectors are certainly dominating their economies on account of their distinctive modern and latest accelerated inexpensive low cost outputs. Their domination in the world politics is certainly based upon their fast innovative activities and fast economic growth. Consequently, It has not only raised their GNP and per capita income, but has multiplied their national income as well from different economic sectors. The same is with their agricultural productivities on the basis of applied modern technologies. Using the modern agricultural technologies, more productive seeds and products preservation facilitation, have pushed their economies in producing surplus agricultural products. The US is one such example, who every year destroy millions of tons of surplus wheat, coffee and maize due to their increased per acre agricultural yields in the world. Their scientific and technological advancement and relevant research have made their ruling monopoly all over the world in the field of agricultural products. The same is with their dairy farming, fish, honey bee and poultry farming. They have achieved self-sufficiency in all their agricultural related products on account of their developed agriculture mechanization and research.

In contrast since last several decades, the higher education and research in several developing countries including Pakistan has lost its importance and values due to several reasons, including financial hardships, lack of qualified scholars, poor research facilities and substandard higher educational facilities. Consequently, not only human development suffered in these developing countries but the overall dependability of all such countries on foreign assistance greatly increased in various fields including; food stuff, defense equipment’s, health facilities, building materials, industrial and agricultural technologies and appropriate utilization of manpower. Poor standards of research, innovations and discoveries adversely affected the agricultural, industrial innovations and research standardization. The uses of imported technologies were also not much effective in our agricultural and industrial productivities, due to the growing ignorance regarding the use of modern sophisticated technologies.

Hence, even in Pakistan, in the financial year 2018 -19, the country export fall almost to $2billion and the fall could further increase to $3 billion. The report of the statistic division shows that, since July 2018 to March 31st, 2019, the total export remained $17 billion, while the export target was $25 billion. The overall production and export greatly suffered due to lack of productive inputs including energy, raw materials, well trained man power and capital formation.

In addition, poor technological advancement and poor research facilities also remained an obstacle to speedup productivity and to lowers the marginal cost. The reason is that our production from our industrial and agricultural sector was not capable to compete with the products of the developed countries in the international markets. Poor and unskilled man power was another obstacle in the process of production and minimizing the dexterity of the man power.

It is further worth mentioning that despite having good number of energetic youth, we failed to extend appropriate higher education facilities, productive skill and appropriate research tools to maximize their productivity. We further failed to make our youth more productive and skillful due to lack of appropriate research training and innovative skills. Looking in to the world innovative research track, our position in the world innovative research is quite discouraging and negligible. It is not only Pakistan having quite a poor position in the research and innovative map but almost the whole Muslim world is having very poor standings. Pakistan is comparatively having much better innovative skill and productivity in the field of defense among the Muslim World. Hence, the Muslim world in particular requires doubling the research potentialities and capabilities of its youth to utilize the available resources more productively. Development of Innovations, discoveries and research potentialities and applications of modern technologies are essentials to compete in the consumer market of the world and to reduce the marginal cost and raise the marginal productivities to compete in the world market. It is therefore suggested that:-

1. Potential higher education as an input needs to be re –activated and it may be productively amended for the enhancement of research capabilities of the youth. Therefore, maximum input be provided for the skill development of the youth for their innovative research work and technological development of different sectors including agriculture, industry, manpower, excavations of deposits, minerals, oil and gas etc.;

2. All the bureaucratic hurdles and obstruction of the Higher Education Commission in the name of quality improvements be removed and free unconditional facilitation be extended to all educational institutions for the free delivery of the quality higher education at all levels;

3. All such higher educational institutions and applied research organizations be properly financially assisted without any discrimination for the development of the research culture in the country;

4. Personal grudges and likes and dislikes and biased approaches of the controlling authorities at Country as well Provincial levels be minimized for achieving the desired objectives of developing innovations, discoveries and modern technologies;

5. Free hand to all such research and educational institutes with the required guidelines from the HEC and HERA is certainly encouraged but not the authoritarian hold on personal grudges and biased approaches be extended to adversely suffer the desired goals of imparting quality education and research;

6. Resource generation for transformative effect and self-sustaining of the educational and research institutes be encouraged and facilitation to raise patents of the Universities and Research Institutes be appreciated;

7. Unnecessary, biased ban on admissions of the educational institutions on personal grudges on the basis of financial greed be immediately lifted on such higher educational institutes. In addition, International Coll-aborative Research and Aca-demic Exchange Activities need to be facilitated to speedup research culture and economic development.  

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