I have often argued that the root cause of the problems we are facing in Pakistan is the lack of education. Without proper education, we are unable to elect competent leaders or make any rational decisions as a nation. If almost half of our population is unable to read and write a single word, extremism easily flourishes and there is no way we can have a stable and performing economy.
This already desperate situation was dealt another blow this week after the government announced its plans to dissolve the HEC or Higher Education Commission. This federal body was one of the best performing organizations in the country (until its funding was drastically slashed) and oversaw some of Pakistan’s universities rise to worldwide prominence.
It’s hard to imagine what logical reasoning could have driven our glorious leaders to take such a catastrophic step. It makes no sense to hand over such a critical role to the corrupt and incompetent provinces. On this issue, I’d have to agree with the conspiracy theorists and also add a few theories of my own.
The HEC takes a strong stand against fake degrees and has had an exceptionally clean record. Once disbanded, our dirty politicians, many of whom hold fake degrees, would be completely free to run amock. Most likely, this was the main motivation behind the move.
It could also be a conspiracy to ensure that our future will remain in the hands of the corrupt few while most of our populations remains illiterate and powerless. How medieval is that?
Here is a message from Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, one of the most respected men in the country and the man who can be credited with jump-starting the IT and Telecom sector in Pakistan. He had been heading the HEC during its best performing years.
A demonstration in protest of the dissolution of HEC is being held tomorrow (Tuesday, April 5th). You can join in through the Facebook event Defending HEC.
8 thoughts on “Protest against dissolution of HEC”
we will not allow the illetrates to write the future of educators……. INQILAB INQILAB INQILAB….. :@ :@ :@ :@ :@ :@ :@
h.e.c has not achieved any good results. your arguments are baseless. they are only reaching to conclusion without any concrete evidence otherthan heresy.
i have many examples , that have been verified by h.e.c but are fake degree holders otherwise. in addition, hec officials and clerkical staff thts working ova there is working with the help of sixth sense. if u get a chance to get ur degree h.e.c verified u will notice this that they only see verifications of board, university, without confirming from them about the accuracy of contents. in a selected cases, where there are high stakes they do check..but the practice of verification is inadequate. n biased.
as far as, ph.d and uplift of higher education is concerned. we know in real practice that it is only escalation of paper ph.d holders rather than ”minds” many a cases have been registered for plagiarism. abroad they are rated as ill performers. many come back with dejection..
having said this , i will also add that h.e.c is only a superflous institution that is costing governmental machinery and finances without providing any substantial results.
on a provncial level, many good insitituions are working. like punjab service commission. again there is alot of discrepancy here as corruption has permeated in all spheres but things might get improved.
on a note , where you mention that education is the cause why people can not decide their votes, and cannot have say in politics, i dont agree with you.. 1. basic issue in any society is never education; its ‘justice’ previously, when education was not that common justice brought goodness to society.
and plz dont you talk about revolutions. in this day and age , no revolution will work. zia, yahaya, ayub, prevaiz mushrf all brought chnage of regime and system, and they r said to have brought revol..now if revl wud come it woud be another army. mind it. common men will always remain common. if anything u desire in ur society, just desire justice, order. not education or change of system. rule of law, correct interpretation of law. and good laws make good citizens.
regards….
You’re probably right in that it isn’t a perfect institution, but to dissolve it due to a few shortcomings isn’t the answer. The positives that have resulted from the HEC’s workings far outweigh the problems you mention. Actually, many of those, like the quality of our PhDs can be attributed to the individual institution rather than to the HEC.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at with regards to revolution. We’re not a revolutionary people by nature. We are too divided and weak for any such thing and future changes will likely result from more military coups. However, justice and order can’t be achieved without raising the education level of your masses. What good are the best of laws if your citizens don’t have the capacity to comprehend them?
===>The positives that have resulted from the HEC’s workings far outweigh the problems you mention
which positives?
====>What good are the best of laws if your citizens don’t have the capacity to comprehend them?
:- are you saying that only educated can comprehend ? we have proffessionals in engin, in medicine, in i.t, in computers, in ecomics, marketing…n other dept… none of which teach us how to comprehend laws.our education doesnot make us good citizens. our present education stresses on ‘ethics’ as the last thing whereas it ought to b the first. we can also argue that prudence , wisdom, acuman are not specific to ‘educated’
todays system of education is so formualated as to make you dull, submissive, and manual workers. the more learned you are , the more submisive you become to the status quo. todays education is making pet of people.
brother i m really sorry to cause you this trouble, but education is the last thing we require. srilanka , israel, r 100 percent educated, but the former is broken by internal strifes, n the later is an international terrorist.
we do not need BE , m.sc, b.sc, phd, m.phil, masters in law, english, medicine, zoology, business to ‘comprehend’ laws. all we need is good laws that are based on justice without polarizing to any specific segment of population. we need common man with great ideas as opposed to educated cows. in rural areas of india panchait are working, in rural aras of baluchistan , fuedal lords decide their cases. there is so much more to argue if u can come up with some good points.
regards
as a student i strongly condemn the dissolution of HEC because if there was any credibility of our degrees abroad it was due to this institution.saying that HEC was not a perfect institution does not justify the act. it is a great concern for those who value education that the provincial government is not successful in maintaining the primary and secondary education, how will it maintain the standard of higher education. it is my appeal to pakistanis who want their country to prosper in true sense to take a stand on this serious issue
thank you
I totally agree with the indignant doc, as a first hand witness to the so called elite educational institutions of Mr.Internet-is-cheaper-now, Mr.We-have-created-transcription-workers, Mr.We-have-published-papers-in-journals blah blah. H.E.C is yet another plundering good for nothing organization.
I have seen paper-tiger (toilet paper) Ph.d teachers, devoid of any morality or any decency. I have seen MS/Ph.d getting cursed by their students.
We don’t need freaking paper published in journal of Bangladesh or Malaysia, heck we don’t really need papers published in journals of Eu or USA, we just need technology replication ala south Korea. We need worth ethics ala legendary Germans or Japanese. We need industries for the graduates to channelize their energies, we need defense lab to further the designs.
What good is H.E.C for, it has been leaking tax payers money to Microsoft. Why has it not been able to adopt Open source software to save billions of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Our engineers are just Matlab-bullies or AutoCAD-bullies. Yeah there is no harm in having M$ based s/w here & there but for a 50$-60$ deficit country spending like rainbow-sheikhs, doesn’t make much sense spending billion on paying purchasing licenses cost. (btw stealing is worse)
H.E.C is nothing more that a body hijacked by the 2 bit teachers of 80’s who have further hijacked the noble teaching profession.
We are becoming a nation of creating good-for-nothing-teachers, a nation caught in the vicious cycle of teacher-student-teacher.
We need a prioritized-parallel-development model in every facet of our country.
I have been kicked out of a job for morality reasons (too much of it) & I was not a teacher. Now I am a jobless & I am thinking of becoming a teacher. (get it :), the mentality i.e. :((( )
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Mr.NotBitter
I hope you have not removed my earlier comments due to your disagreement with my view. Anyway you seems like you have chosen side.
My country pakistan is first country of the world where education, education institutes and education related work have no value. My country kings think, with out the education pakistani can rule the world.So they always try their best to destroy all type education system institutes, educationist.
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