 I'm your host, Hamdor, and today we're going to be speaking about education, pitfalls and opportunities. I mean, all know that educational sectors and developing countries tend to face significant amount of challenges, whether it's funding, whether it's the ability to produce quality publications, and whether it's the ability to attract faculty from all across the world. I have with me Dr. Homa Vakai. She's an educator, a practitioner, as well as somebody who appears on television and shares their insights on current affairs as well. Dr. Homa Vakai, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Thank you for having me. All right, so let's start off with education, and we're going to be speaking about the pitfalls. We're going to be speaking about the opportunities in a while, but what about the pitfalls? When you look at Pakistan's educational landscape at this point in time, what do you think are the main challenges that educationists, such as yourself, actually encounter? Well, frankly speaking, I have spent about 20 plus years of my academic career, so to say, with public sector universities, two in fact, and now I am with a private sector university. And there is something that I've been saying for at least the last five years, and that is that if Pakistan needs one emergency, it is education emergency, and there's good reason for that. You see, we've compartmentalized education into saying what is the state of the higher education. You cannot have good higher education unless you have decent primary, secondary, and tertiary education, and then of course, higher education or research or PhDs or whatever. So the situation is critical because our school enrollment is low, and the fallout from schools is even higher. And people don't realize this, but the economic constraints that Pakistan is struggling for and COVID has jeopardized the situation further. So a lot of students, young students in their mid-schools and lower secondary schools and higher secondary schools were taken out during COVID. At that time, studies tell us boys went back to school, girls were held back. So once they stayed home during COVID, they never went back to school. To add to this, the economic current crisis strangulation further complicated the situation, and now people are actually pulling children out of schools. So what to talk of secondary education or tertiary education, but having said this, even the state of secondary tertiary education is in a drier state for good reason. And I'm going to just share stats with you. The predictions for turning around Pakistan's education is that they should at least devote 7% of the GDP to education. That is what they say. Essentially, international organizations say that at least 4% should be devoted to education. Most civilized countries devote 4% or more to education, even in the developing world. In Pakistan, we devote 2% or less than 2% to education. Why do you think that's okay? And that is also not utilized. The case is fairly simple. I think it's not a priority since the inception of Pakistan. Education has not been a priority. There is lack of consistency of policy. It is seen more as a political tool than something to make the population skillful and give them tools of upward social mobility. I think that is not even in the scheme of things because you see that the education is divided. You have the elite capture and they have everything, including access to 0.02% of English medium schools, which eventually prepares them for some good universities in Pakistan or perhaps admissions abroad. Or now Pakistan is experiencing a new thing, which is where a lot of Western universities, because of the economic crunch that they are facing, they're bringing down facilitation centers here in Pakistan. And the privileged will have access to that and that they get foreign degrees. Those who are educated or have acquired education are actually choosing to leave Pakistan. But 2022 and 2023 are very tough years for Pakistan because the brain drain has been tremendous. I think all of this reflects on how this neglected sector is now bringing down the state. And that is how I see it. Because if we want to actually be anywhere in the world today or even if you want to compete with India, my fielded sentence here is that wars in today's world are not fought on conventional fronts. They are fought on the economic front, on the diplomatic front, on the intellectual front. And so that you need educational front, absolutely. So you need educated population. We are one of the youngest countries in the world. 70% of our population is under 35 years of age. And while I thought I'm going to have this conversation with you, I thought I will quickly take a look at some of the figures which are there. And they are also not very pretty. For example, 25% of countries' population is enrolled in higher education, if you call it higher education. 25%. But heavy like this, they are unemployed, under employed or irrelevant employed. And then I was looking at another labor survey. And what does it tell us? 37% of our youth, Pakistan, aged between 15 to 29 are neither in education nor in training nor employed, which means that 21.8 million people are just out there. That's our number, yeah. So it's a ticking bomb. And I think the figures are higher than this because we don't count all our people. That's also one of the problems. Right, absolutely. So when we speak about the educational sector and higher education, I'm going to be speaking about the primary sector in a while. But when we talk about university rankings, for example, I mean rankings can be very misleading because it's always important to understand that the departments in which universities are actually excelling in, I mean universities should be basically ranked upon that rather than the university as a whole. But we don't see a lot of Pakistani universities making it to the top rankings of the QS or times higher education for that matter. What do you think that's the case? Well, if you look at it, I think it's ranked 15 higher education by QS ranking, no Pakistani universities in top 500. That's the times ranking. The universities that have some recognition are perhaps Afan University in the medical sciences, Kaidiazum University in the public sector, and Lums University in the private sector. These universities are fairly known to the international community. Absolute, complete, entirely elite education. Right. So the people who have access to these universities, except what has Kaidiazum University, are come from a section of the population which is not representative of Pakistan. But they control Pakistan. For example, Lums students are now opting for civil service, which means they are the policy makers of tomorrow. And they have a complete disconnect with what is happening on the ground. The same is the case of what I call the Karachi Grammar Culture, or the HSM culture. You see, the small segment of population that has access to schools like HSM or goes to Karachi Grammar, they have their own network, they pull at each other, and they control Pakistan, but they also have a serious disconnect with what is happening on the ground. You have huge sections of the population going to Madarsas, which we have not been able to regularize, which we have not, Musharraf tried to introduce modern education. It is on paper. It is not done on the ground. And basically, basically it boils down to the fact that we don't allocate resources. Even today, we are opening more universities. It's a political slogan. It sounds nice in political processions and saying that to people that more universities are coming to your province. But at the end of the day, universities are serious business. University means good faculty. University means labs. University means libraries. University means trained academia. None of that is happening. And we're trying to do this in a vacuum and it's collapsing. To me, the education sector in Pakistan is in a state of inclusion. And unfortunately, we talk about economic turnaround. We talk about getting there. We think of the thing that Sabeck was take us there. In this knowledge economy, so to say, how do you survive when education is not a priority? Even in our neighborhood, Hansa, if you look at India, 100% primary education enrollment. Bangladesh, 100% primary education enrollment. Sri Lanka, 100% primary education enrollment. And Sri Lanka, by the way, also has a 91%, 91.7% percent. Absolutely. Yes, we don't even have that. And then, of course, we struggle with elements of extremism. We struggle with extensive irregular use of substance. There's a collapse of governance and the academic governance, perhaps, is the weakest. Right, absolutely. And I mean, these are staggering figures. Let me give you another staggering figure. If you take a look at the dropout ratio, as far as primary education is concerned, or basically kids who are going to school and suddenly they decide to abort, they decide to get out of their educational systems as well, Pakistan has one of the highest dropout ratios in the world. And the other countries are actually not doing economically all that well. Obviously, you have the economic powerhouse of Nigeria, but it also has a very high dropout rate. And then you also have Afghanistan as well. So how do you deal with this dropout ratio and the dropout percentage? Because it is actually very staggering and something needs to be done about it. Hamza, I wish I had an answer to your question, except that my heart bleeds and I still don't see the focus required at the policy-making level, in the boardrooms, on decision-making tables to correct the course. I don't just see it there. The only thing that I hear is that they will do something for the optics. So some laptops will be given out. They will announce new universities. And then, you know, this capital system has commodified education also. And with this modification of education, the fields that are projected as to be pursued to get jobs is actually very, very, it inflicts more damage, if I may say so. For example, we do not encourage people to become scientists or engineers. We encourage them to do business degrees because it means that you can make a quick big buck. But what are you going to say? And it's not going to make anything. Then, of course, there is some, now the new focus is on entrepreneurship. Even if the focus is on entrepreneurship, you need some hands-on practical experience. You need some sense of innovation. You need incubation centers. You need seed money. You have to have the capacity and the resilience to fail. And to give your students and give your youth the space to fail and then start again. We do not even give them a head start or we don't even allow them to start off. So I don't understand how we are going to overcome this. You need a multi-pronged strategy, a focus, and most importantly, allocation of resources. It's not going to happen unless you allocate resources. Very true. Very true. Resources are basically the way forward as far as education is concerned. But if you take a look at the concept of ghost teachers and ghost schools, I mean, I was going through USAID reports where in Afghanistan, obviously, you know, it's kind of understandable and it's actually shocking that USAID has not been able to provide the requisite education infrastructure to Afghan students. But the dropout ratio, as well as ghost schools, are pretty much prominent over there. But that's kind of understandable because it's a waterfall in country overall. Pakistan does have restive areas, but I've seen ghost schools and ghost teachers even in rural areas of Punjab, which is supposed to be economically prosperous or comparatively economically prosperous province. So what do you do about and why is there no accountability of ghost schools and ghost teachers? Well, it's financially lucrative, this corruption. And it's essentially means that if you're a ghost school, which is a ghost teacher, if you're a ghost school, you're getting money from your problems. Right. For it. If you're a ghost teacher, you're getting a pay and you're employed elsewhere. So you're essentially having two pays. You will be surprised, Hamza, that a government teacher is paid more than a private school teacher. And there's zero accountability. So essentially, I think the way forward is that tangible evidence and the situation on the ground tells us that the state as a provider of education and even healthcare has failed. Right. Right. And failed, as is failed, has failed this morning. So I think the only way forward is public-private partnership. I'm not saying it's the best option. All I'm saying is that the state should move back to the regulatory positions and be a watchdog and allow the public sector to come in and ensure that there is inclusivity. So I think for funding of a resource mobilization, we should be looking at a voucher system. We should be looking at involving the parental community or a community monitoring system. We should be looking at the private sector coming forward and adopting public sector universities and public sector schools. And where it has happened, it has been a huge success. And even in the health sector, because I think education has helped move together. In this is a fantastic example. Private initiative catering to people, doing a tremendous job. Now the government approaching Dr. Bari to take over some of the institutions both in Punjab and in Sindh. I think the way forward for Pakistan because of weak academic governance, the bureaucracy, the blouted civil service and bureaucracy that is involved in all of this, the only way forward is perhaps to bring in the private sector, facilitate them, cut down on the bureaucracy and the red tape isn't that exist right now and do it on a war footing. Like I said earlier, we need an emergency here. It's our future. It's our children. And it's a ticking bomb because if tomorrow then you have what a nation drug edits or people who are looking for options where they think there's nothing that they have in this world, no tomorrows, nothing to look forward to, no future. Because what we're doing right now is that we're taking away hope from our youth and our children. They don't have hope. Now that's a very frightening scenario overall. We just had the Pakistan It is, it is frightening. Yeah. So we just had the Pakistan Governance Forum just recently in 2023. Yes, I think it happened in some of the other contenders for that. Yes. So I actually attended that forum and there was this, you know, segment which was dealing with education and the concept of, or, you know, the entire practice of attestation of degrees came up. Lots of students are actually suffering because of you, you mentioned red tapeism and the bloated public sector, which is preventing students from realizing the potential. It's almost as if a fresh college graduate or fresh university graduate has to go to the interboard certificate committee, the IBCC, just to get their attestation done. And then they also have to pay a certain amount of money to try and make sure that they can then get that HEC stamp to basically certify that their degree is genuine. Lots of students have been suffering because of that as well. So do you think that this entire, you know, I understand that big degrees do exist in Pakistan and there's a need to attempt genuine degrees and to actually attest the fact that there are people who are who are genuine degree holders. But do you think that this entire, you could say, government intervention in the educational system is preventing students from realizing their true potential? And sir, this is a two-edged sword. Okay. There has been a mushrooming of universities where you have medical universities and dental colleges giving out degrees without an interface with the hospitals, without laboratories, you know, giving out masters in science without a laboratory. So the university, I mean, I think this was introduced with all good intention and the universities have been shut down. Whereas in the past, the practice was that they would enroll students and then tell the higher education commission or the regulatory authorities, look, we have a body of 100,000, we have a broadly of 1000 students. What do we do with them so you regularize us? And that allowed regularization of universities that were not universities at all. They were money-making entities, very, very commercial. And because of the youth budget that we have, opening up a university and promising book, promising book, promising tomorrow is a very lucrative business. So I don't think we can leave it entirely unregulated. I'm not saying people don't suffer, I'm not saying this corruption, I'm not saying this weak governance, but we need to address that rather than completely eliminating it. Because I for one know that there are several universities that they open up in two, three, four or five rooms. They enroll students with very poor faculty or no faculty. No questions asked on the qualification of the faculty. The faculty in these universities is paid less than probably primary school teachers. Yeah, yeah. So some regulation had to be introduced to ensure that the degrees that we churn out are at least worth the paper they're written on. Right now some of the degrees that we're giving out are not even worth the paper they're written on. We're not imparting in skill, we're not imparting any knowledge. They don't know anything when they step out. I am sitting in this position. I have jobs. I do not have people who have the skill to match those positions despite having a degree. And this is across the board. There are students who come and sit across me here and I interview my students personally. And they have sports like 80% and 86% and they can't speak two words articulately and I'm not saying in English and Urdu also. They can't write two sentences. And I don't know what to do them. I hate turning them away but I know that they will not survive the degree. They will not survive in undergrad program. And that is why I say we do not have a magic wand to improve our higher education unless the focus is on secondary education and primary education. That's where you and then of course have an alternative. Vocational training skills something that you do after high school and have a respectable career. Have a respectable option in the society. And I think if we've stopped we had that we had a vocational metric and then we abolished it. Everybody wants to get into a public sector university at a subsidized rate get a degree that's not worth anything and then come into a market with a degree that does not ensure anything. And one of the one of the real indicators of the university strength is also publications. And we talk about international publications. It's about ensuring that you know there are peer review impact factor. Again again something done with very good intention. Okay. And turned and turned into almost a racket. So if you're well connected if you know people you will get your 10 12 15 19 publications to get your promotions. And what if you're not well connected? And then you have sorry What if you're not well connected and you might be brilliant? Sorry. And then of course there are elements of plagiarism. So I know people if they will call up a journal and they'll say if you publish my paper and they say of course we'll publish it. But only if you put the name of one of my professors as a co-author so that he also gets a publication. And I am convinced that HEC is aware of all of this. And that is why the private sector universities are doing away with the quantitative aspect of research. And they look at the qualitative aspect of research. I mean if you produce five papers which is actually added to the research construct to your field then it's fine instead of producing 49 50 70. I don't know how many papers some of the series that I see are might bongling with a hundred and something papers turned out. Which essentially means it's a copy-paste exercise. And then they turned this into a request for promotions which further harm the situation because people are desperate to turn out 10 publications for associate professor and then 15 or 19 publications for a professor. And that's it. Nobody looks at the quality of those papers where they are published. And then because books there is an element of favoritism so they would not accept books. I mean there is just we've commodified everything. We've turned everything into something which is exploited by few to their advantage and the rest are left out and it has left them disillusioned. So we also have not very good people coming to the academia. And the entire And once again once again academia pays lower than other fields. So it does not attract the best. Very true. Very true. So Dr. Bakai when we talk of you mentioned one notable exception in the public sector that's Kaidiazum University. And obviously you you know you served in the IBA and Karachi as well. Why do you think these two institutes stand out and what can other universities which are lagging behind learn from them? Kaidiazum University I am not in a position to comment. I know I have friends in the Kaidiazum University but I don't know Kaidiazum University from inside. But I think at the age of one it started small and wanted to remain small for a very long time. It was not one I what I call on an expansion street. And thus events IBA went on an expansion street is the maintenance of quality has been an issue. But more importantly despite being a public sector university IBA had complete academic autonomy. And independent board of governors they were able to maintain merit both in induction of faculty and in the induction of students. This this this autonomy this academic autonomy allowed IBA to function the way it did and it was able to create actually a very illustrious group of alumni that continues to help IBA. IBA is an island of excellence but I think this excellence must proliferate. And today the question is that is that excellence even at IBA being maintained? Okay yeah that's that's a very important consideration. What would your recommendation be for the public sector? Or for the government or for the government to actually you know treat education as a priority? You mentioned it earlier but what I'm trying to say is that the government encounters so many I mean just to be the devil's advocate the government encounters so many different problems. They have a sovereign debt crisis to take care of. They have declining foreign exchange reserves. They have constant tensions with India and many would argue that you know the defense budget also needs to increase at the very same time. There would be those who would say yes ideally education should be invested in and that is something that's going to define the future of trajectory of Pakistan. But there would be those who would say that well you know Pakistan is under so many different compulsions that they won't be able to legislate they won't be able to treat education as a priority which again is a flawed argument but there would be many who would actually be advocating for that. So what would your message be for those who actually advocate for the latter? Well frankly speaking I think we need to we need to actually sit down and see what we want to do in the next 20 years to our youth. One, focus on primary and secondary education stop opening more public sector universities you can't afford them. Consolidate the existing ones. Go into public-private partnership. IB is IB today because IB completely outsourced its infrastructure to the private sector and it was Dr Ishaq Usain's personality that that gave people the due comfort to invest in IB as infrastructure which then allowed its expansion. IB was catering to what the students in hundreds now it's catering to thousands but even even now they do small. I think the way forward is strong regulation strong regulation and a public-private partnership subsidizing education is something the government cannot afford. They should create an alternative field an alternative avenue of skill and educational training. There is a demand for our skilled educational workers in the international market and there is a demand here. Our people who work on as mechanics people who work on refrigeration on air conditioning usually do not have any formal training. They they learn it on the job. If we could give this these professions the due respect and the technology sort of construct paradigm varnish whatever that you'd like to call it and then give them due respect in the society. I think that is the problem. We still don't respect the vocational people with skill. We are so obsessed with the degree thing and I think Germany is doing. It's a fantastic model. You have a choice. Also some of the countries maybe in country as well. And I personally think that at the end of the day we keep saying that we have so many challenges there's India India has invested in its education and its youth and we need Bangladesh to start and it's a matter of priority. You know Brutto Saab had said that I'm bum when I get I am gas kind of yeah just for our viewers that basically means we will eat grass but we will make the bomb. The nuclear bomb. We make that nuclear bomb and we made it despite all the constraints and compulsions. We probably need to come down to a resolution we will say come what may we going to educate our children. And unless we do that we will come down as a state. Pakistan's survival is changed upon how we treat our youth today. If it's taken with that kind of seriousness I'm sure we'll find a way forward. Thank you. Thank you so much Dr. Homa Bakai. Thank you so much for joining me. Likewise. Well that was Dr. Homa Bakai. Thank you so much for watching this edition of Islam about today on Hawaii. You can follow us on all of our social media platforms for further updates. Until next time take care. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our website thinktechawaii.com Mahalo.