As we ponder over the brutal realities and truths of this life, we often run up to an inexorable deadlock of what it ultimately takes to stand out in this society. The world is subject to expedite change, the funeral of old paradigms marking the births of new ones leaving the individual in dire need of the latest weapons to break himself free from the interminable increasing strains of society. Escalating this notion to a macro level, we Pakistanis have to comprehend from time and time again that we are indeed circumscribed by a myriad of factors which impedes us from reaching our maximum potential. Surely something’s missing, but what is it? And most importantly, what can be done about it?
Let’s address one of these problems at stake here. According to Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a British ranking agency, Pakistan has the weakest higher education system in the world. In a report analyzing 50 countries, Pakistan ended up last with a score of 9.2. The US and the UK, on the other hand, clenched their prizes with top scores of a 100 and 98.5 respectively while our neighbor India was 24th with a score of 60.9. These statistics do reflect a rather dismal reality. If these figures really depict where we stand in the world, then this is something nothing short of a national crisis. With a petty 2.5% (312 billion) of the budget being devoted to this sector and staggering amounts of up to Rs. 781 billion being spent on defense, we can evidently see where our priorities as a nation lie. The ratio is evidently flawed! However, this in no way implies that prodigious defense spending is detrimental – however it simply does not justify the relatively minuscule amounts being earmarked for education. We have to ask ourselves, are these figures really auspicious to our ubiquitous dream of a Parha Likha Pakistan?
In recent years, the Pakistani higher education system has simply crippled due to the mismanagement and ignorance of the government. Highly scanty in number, those hailing from the private sector have made some leeway, however, they are entitled to provide services to a minuscule, rich Pakistani community who can afford to pay their children’s exorbitant tuition fees. The rest of the masses are abandoned to the face the brunt of the poorly run public sector. Concomitantly, the quality of education is majorly circumscribed to rote learning through quizzes and exams plagiarize and cramming substantial junks of information on the nights leading to the exams. The system has turned into a mere rat race for the common student, where one has little choice than to participate. Dissent is blasphemous, leaving him/her rejected by the academic community and the society at large. It isn’t surprising to hear many reviews where graduated students have admitted to having not learned anything significant after all the hard work, time and money invested while chasing their degrees. Isn’t this quite the opposite of what we expect our student community to achieve?
“There are two educations– one should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.” John Adams
As bad as it is, the levels leading up to higher education depict a similar gloomy story. According to Article 25-A of this country’s Constitution, the State is entitled to provide free and compulsory education to all children from the age of five to sixteen. Akin to this, the government also promised to put all children in schools by 2020. However, given the sheer level of misallocation in national budgets which has plagued this country since independence, this remains at best a dream. As we currently stand, nearly 30% of children are out of school and only around 5% of children aged 17-23 make it into higher education. As horrifying as this might seem, the mechanisms installed to fix such alarming levels of inequality in society seem to be idle.
It is imperative to realize that in a world pillared upon innovation and knowledge, education plays a significant role in steering a society towards achieving its developmental goals. Literacy doesn’t simply entail the know-how to write or the ability to read something of paper; indeed, it encompasses the ability to reason, inquire, and investigate for one ’s self. Socrates illuminated this idea beautifully, “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think”. Reports suggest that about 30% of the world Muslim population is illiterate, with the number of universities in the whole Middle East falling greatly shorter than the United States alone. Earlier paradigms of development were mostly pioneered about a person’s wealth or the ability to satisfy his physical wants – the debate has long evolved since then. Materialism, as egalitarian it might seem cannot solely be the stick and carrot for the day in this day and age. Innovation and research are steadily becoming the distinguishing tools for progress and it is imperative that we soon realize it as a nation. Besides even if materialism were the order of the day, it would remain infeasible without the uninterrupted availability of quality, reasonable education provided to everyone irrespective of their social and economic status. For it could emerge as one of the few tools that could effectively counter the deep abyss of myopia. It’s time that we as a nation realized, but most importantly act upon this.
