Historical meritocracy in academic recruitment has been dismantled by political favors and union interference, leading to an influx of underqualified faculty and degraded institutional standards.
Mohammad Zafar Wassan
The education is the sole criteria to develop a nation. The education enriches knowledge. The subject knowledge paves the way for research. The research findings gives laws, theories, equations, inferences and logical conclusions. These scientific discoveries opens the doors of technology. The technology is an action for multiplication of products. The production is the pathway leading to destinations of development. The development brings the change in lives. It improves the life. It promotes the human dignity. It gives enough resources to divide and upscale the life of a common person. It develops and understanding to live with harmony. It ends schisms, started from ego. It causes unity among the society and develops a nation.
In present times, the inhabitants of Europe is leading to avail the global resources. The America and Australia are too inhabited by the people with European origin. They have the best societies to honor the humanity. They have best governance institutions to deliver the service. Their governance traits are based on justice, law sanctity and effective accountability mechanisms. These societies are free to express their version.
The social, political, economic discussion are across the board and it is norm of the day. The majority has an honor to decide about their ruler by adult franchise voting systems..
Let use analyze the higher education standards in our country. It is a tragedy that we are not visionary to understand the democratic freedom and number power in our institutions. It is not limited to our educational institutions, but, whole system is entangled and crippled in these intricacies of majority mandate. The vote bank to win the election is the sole priority of our political leaders. They are not visionary about the real course of developmental and ultimate destinations for a better society. The better societies makes a nation. The nations decide the destinies. Likewise, the representation in power corridors of our higher education institutions are inept, inefficient and useless to lead the education meant for national uplift. These decisive bodies like academic council, syndicate and senate is not meaningful to deliver the envisioned delivery outputs as earnestly required for a developing country. These representative bodies are not working to meet the standards of higher education meant to compete and avail the economic opportunities from the global markets. These decision making bodies are more instrumental to aggrandize the political groups who formed different unions, meant to dither the process of education. It is quite strange that teacher bodies command majority slots in the syndicate. Now, we should talk about the quality of faculty, meant to inculcate the higher education. Historically, in the past, the toppers of university were offered the job of teacher in university. In the beginning, these academician were mindful about the standards of education, research activities and discipline in university. With the lapse of time and by the blessings of our politicians, senior functionaries, union leaders, senior managers, the recruitment, selection and promotion criteria under legal provisions were done away. The dirty political favours got the entry into university academic power corridors to decide about the policies and managerial actions. In present scenario, the majority of selected teachers were losers in fair competition for the selection, as teacher or other slots. Further, The egoistic attitude of politician, senior managers and academicians caused to impair the standards of education in our prestigious higher education institutions.
In view of view about critical situation, it is urgently required to move ahead to improve the standards of higher education, besieged with political interference, union supremacy, incompetent faculty and inept leadership to deliver the better meaningful outputs leading to country’s development… It is suggested that teachers’ association bodies should be completely banned and their representation in the syndicate should be done away, as ineffective representation is of no use. The faculty members should be made accountable for the poor performance, related to their service delivery outputs. The research works, which enabled them to avail the promotions in next higher grades should be scrutinized meticulously. This scrutiny should meant to sort out the viability and feasibility and impacts in country’s development. The plagiaristic research works should dealt with strict disciplinary action. The Higher Education Commission should play their role to scrutinize the teacher’s role to inculcate the education and transfer the knowledge to the students. The education funding is meant for students, better education, research activities leading to development. It should not be used to favour and aggrandize unscrupulous elements swaying over the affairs of university. I am sure, the stakeholders who are responsible and intending to develop the country will look into the matter and decide the working mechanisms of university in the best interest of country and people.
Read: The Nature’s loss: Indus River’s Elegy
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Hailing from Sanghar district of Sindh, the author is a freelance writer. He writes for different newspapers on the subjects of Governance, Climate Change, Current Affairs and Natural Resources Management.
