Plagiarism is but one Symptom
Every so often there is a
gleeful story that x number of professors caught plagiarizing and they have
been suspended. The gossip on this lasts a few hours and subsides.
Whether or not an investigation
is properly conducted we will never know. Could it be that in academia,
plagiarism charges have become what blasphemy is in the rest of the country?
Could this be how rivalries for promotion are now settled? No one has looked
into this and we are all content with the charge of plagiarism being used and
some careers ruined.
Now I am not saying there is no
plagiarism. Of course there is. And some prominent cases have been uncovered
convincingly where papers of Nobel Laureates have been blindly copied. This
incident speaks well to the level of academic development in Pakistan where
academics even lack the ability to plagiarize well.
Is plagiarism the only form of academic dishonesty?
We hear of this software that
detects plagiarism. Yet I have not heard
of how well it has been tested? Like all other software, it must have some
margin of error. Who is using it how?
Can it be abused? Of course our media is too busy chasing political gossip and
arranging mock politician battles to investigate such issues. But then why
should anchors rise above the energy and competence level of the rest of
society.
Software can only detect
similarities of text but not other forms of intellectual dishonesty. For
example, what happens when original ideas are lifted without attribution is
that not a crime or is it only similarity of writing. I have seen so many
writings on Pakistan both by local authors as well as foreign including large
donor agencies where original ideas are taken without attribution. Take any
donor report and look at the references and you will see quite easily how they
have missed out on ideas that have been hammered out by our thinkers. Another
question worth asking then is, do our professors learn from the donors who feel
they are above norms of intellectual property rights?
Similarly what about
data-manipulation, which several governments have used to show the success of
their economic policy? Similarly there is an industry out there that is always
making up statistics to make a biased case for funds they seek. For example,
there is pressure by funding agencies to show poverty and other social
indicators are always worsening.
Should we rule out imitation?
Imitation is the way humanity
learns. Let us be sure that we are not discouraging some imitation. Well known cases of authors and musicians
copying each other with minor variations has created great work. Remixing in
music is a delightful and creative industry. Let us not confuse creative
imitation with plagiarism.
To begin with all students learn
by summarizing masters and finding little twists to show originality. A certain
amount of imitation is necessary to learning. I hope that these plagiarism
witch-hunts are not scaring away students and even professors from creative
mimicry.
When I was Vice Chancellor of
PIDE, I had asked all students to just go to the Nobel website and review the
work of all Nobel laureates in Economics and write essays on ideas of each of
these individuals but do so in their own words and storytelling style. The idea
was would then publics a cheap volume to be distributed in all our colleges and
universities. To me such work is a part of pedagogy even though it may not be
path breaking and creative.
While we are all focused on
plagiarism, we must also ensure that it is not a witch- hunt of academics. We
must all ask the question, why is it such an epidemic in our universities? Are
the faculty members alone guilty? Or is it the designers of the system who are
also to blame.
HEC’s Mechanical Approach
Hoodbhoy was among the first to
point out the faults in incentive structure set up by the HEC. The mechanical approach based on counting degrees,
years in service and number of publications has focused academics on HECs
indicators of quantitative success taking them away from inquiry, thought and
research.
Many of us (most of all
Hoodbhoy) have written on how HEC needs to rethink its paradigm but the
bureaucracy of HEC is deaf to such pleas even if they emanate from prominent
Pakistani thinkers. Donors such as the World Bank conduct HEC evaluations
without listening to such opinion. Of course donors are academically
honest!!!?!
The biggest failure of HEC is
that it has failed to create an academic atmosphere. The easy way has been
playing the mechanical numbers game and blaming it all on lack of financing.
But then to be fair HEC never contended to be developing academia. They were
always in a numbers game to generate thousands of universities, millions of
PhDs, and billions of papers regardless of quality.
A good professor is not a mere
publishing machine. In the rest of the world the quality of publication matters
too. How peers perceive research and how seminal it has been is also a big
consideration in determining its merit.
Academics who shake a paradigm are held in high esteem no matter how
many publications they have, Case in point is John Nash of ’A Beautiful Mind’. On HEC criteria, he would
never have been appointed a professor in the Pakistani University system.
A university is not just a place
where students agglomerate for a brief interaction with average teachers. So far HEC has focused on numbers without
direction. The approach has been to build more and more universities, expand
enrolment, and push for publications and as many degrees as possible. What was
forgotten in all this is academic quest and atmosphere, which we have failed to
build in all our universities.
Where are the Professors?
At the heart of the academic
quest is the professor. To HEC she is just an employee to be filled by
advertisement and mechanical criteria. The professor is a motivated inquirer,
researcher, teacher, motivator, inspirer—someone to be cherished and not a
machine to produce degrees or papers.
Universities are not mere administrative units to be managed in the same
way as factories with clear productivity goals a la Taylor. Instead they are
built around professors who cluster students in inspirational inquiry and a
quest for knowledge.
When I was at the Planning
Commission, I always asked universities that came for funding, ‘how many
professors do you have?’ The answer always dismayed me. Most universities had
less than a handful of professors often none of an international quality. There
was no telling these people that international universities have 20-30
professors of the best quality in one department while they do nto even have
that many in most of their universities. They could not see that these
universities competed for professors and did not wait for them to show up on an
advertisement to be interviewed by a deputy secretary.
Yet the lust for funding was
making them expand their campuses across the country. We are the only country
where universities have more campuses than professors. Is this model not giving
students a substandard education? Is this not just as bad as plagiarism? Or
worse?
When I interviewed some of these
students, I was distressed to see the product of this university system. The
education being imparted was dated and of doubtful quality. Their employment
possibilities were seriously affected. Further education prospects of these
students are seriously impaired by this system.
There is a now a human capital
emergency in the country, as our system is not producing what is required for
global competition. But who is listening? This is why I find the focus only on
plagiarism somewhat misplaced. We need to reform the whole system of higher
education and not just pick on a few professors.
I tried to explain to the HEC
that we need more professors, that a university is a collection of clusters of
name-brand professors in departments. Clusters of well-known professors
inspire, set standards, engage in peer review, and set up academic debates.
Combined these activities are the engine which stamps out research, learning
and societal and student knowledge. Such clusters police quality of research
and debate, weeding out plagiarism as a routine.
A university well stocked with
professors and academic freedom will be a hubbub of activity full of classes,
seminars, conferences, experiments, projects, debates and many other forms of
creativity. Such universities work
around the clock not like HEC universities that are barren by the
afternoon.
Is there a lack of Funding or Management?
HECs refrain is the lack of
funding. Their mission to educate is empowering. By now a sense of entitlement
prevails among these self-appointed education missionaries. When I questioned them on quality, the
answer, I got was that is the next stage. So when will it come. ‘Oh maybe 30
-40 years from now’. What a great model. Give me all the funding I want. For
results wait decades after I am gone. I
wish we could all have jobs like that.
HEC told me in many open
meetings that cut defense and give us all the money. A notion, which showed me
how naïve and unacademic these people were. A country at war needs defense
funding. Countries at war have even closed universities down. But the sense of
entitlement allows them this naivety.
I pointed out that universities
should be in a position to raise resources especially when there has been a
state gift of huge tracts of land. In
any case universities cater to a richer class than schools hence some of the burden
could be shared by students. They also had an alumni base that is a source of
funding the world over. I suggested that
all universities prepare a business plan and share it with the Planning
Commission. Of course this business plan will assume that the government will
continue to subsidize education and hence allow universities to run at a loss.
But it will be a great management tool to see how finances could be managed and
delineating key objectives and see how they could be achieved.
To my surprise there was an
uproar against this proposal. Academics did not understand this argument, which
was quite revealing. To date no such
plans have been prepared. Meanwhile demands for funds keep increasing both in
size and volume.
Note most of our universities
have huge tracts of valuable city center land. Can they not learn from
Stanford, which owns a shopping mall to derive income out of? Some universities
own hotels, commercial buildings! None of them give up their land, which by law
is protected. But on a partnership basis they gain income from these
properties. And over time these developed properties return to the
university. Why can we not do this in
Pakistan?
Political fiefdoms with no accountability
But then the VC often runs the
university in Pakistan like a fiefdom. VCs in turn are selected on a political
basis by a process that is deeply flawed. No academic is involved in this
process, which is designed to rule out the best that the country has to offer.
Advertisements for 6 or more
vice chancellors are given at one time by the secretary education. A short list
is prepared by the education department for the search committee to conduct one
interview to decide on VC. Only in Pakistan is this called a search process and
an interview committee called a search committee.
So-called search committees are
appointed on a permanent basis and comprise of government favorites often of
those who know nothing of education. Search committees are supposed to be
university, position and purpose specific and do active search not just an
interview. Surely the HEC should know the difference between a search and an
interview committee. Clearly they do not!
Reforming HEC
There is an urgent need to reform
the HEC system if we are to build human capital or build any world-class
university. Plagiarism is a symptom of a poorly designed university system that
places no value on academics or research.
Like all other Pakistani
government organizations HEC too has built a moat around itself protecting
itself from any reform. HEC administration has also learnt how to use student
power to their own ends and resist any effort to reform and improve the system.
I was surprised how they used the student body to resist the move to
decentralize higher education and even to interfere with HEC staffing.
But like the mullah, HEC is on a
divinely ordained mission placing it above any questioning. They want an
inordinate share of the pie with no responsibility. Like the Mullah they claim
their performance measurement cannot be held in this lifetime.
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