An interesting thing about education in Pakistan has been observed that whenever those political parties come to power whose support depends on Punjab, they try to promote centralization. Since then, the Non-League has ruled for six years and the PTI for four years, and both have tended towards centralization, which has also affected higher education.
After the Eighteenth Amendment, education, along with other ministries and divisions, was transferred to the provinces at all levels, including all areas from elementary to higher education and from curriculum to educational administration. Before the Eighteenth Amendment, the Constitution I was included in the joint federal and provincial list under entry number 38 “Curriculum, Planning, Policy, Center of Excellence, and Educational Standards”. That is, both of them used to take care and supervise them together.
It was a joint procedure even during the time of General Pervez Musharraf and the then education minister who was himself a retired general kept all the powers and decisions in his hands. Provinces already had special powers for college and school education, but the Higher Education Commission became a major obstacle in transferring higher education to the provinces. The Higher Education Commission Ordinance of 2002 gave this authority to the commission. That they control higher education across the country, although the 2010 Eighteenth Amendment gave higher education under the legal and administrative jurisdiction of the provinces, but it could never be implemented. A new clause number twelve was inserted in the Federal legislative list number two, which was given a catchy title “Standards of Higher Education Research, Scientific and Technical Institutions”. In 2011, a multi-party implementation commission consisting of ten members was formed under Article 270 of the Constitution.
This Commission on the Implementation of the Eighteenth Amendment recommended the creation of a relatively small agency for higher education standards, whose responsibility it would be to try to improve the quality of higher education institutions. The Senate approved these proposals and limited the role of the Higher Education Commission to the formulation of standards and left their implementation entirely to the provinces.
A key proposal was to replace the Higher Education Commission’s Executive Ordinance 2002, which was protected under the Seventeenth Amendment imposed by General Musharraf. Although the Eighteenth Amendment transferred education to the provinces at all levels, including the curriculum, it did not change or repeal the Higher Education Commission Ordinance, which allowed Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s court to grant higher education to the provinces. Stop the transfer.
Years passed and the PML-N and later Tehreek-e-Insaaf governments did not show any interest in this transition but both insisted on keeping higher education at the center. Perhaps the only positive decision of the previous PML-N government was to appoint Dr. Tariq Banuri as the head of the Higher Education Commission. Then the Tehreek-e-Insaf government tried to impose a uniform national curriculum and the powers of Dr. Tariq Banuri were curtailed.
Instead of improving the higher education commission ordinance, the Tehreek-e-Insaf government first transferred all powers to the executive director and then the term of the chairperson was reduced to two years. When Shahbaz Sharif’s government assumed power in April 2022, there was some hope. That it will take back the harmful decisions taken by Tehreek-e-Insaaf, but the new government also retained the uniform national curriculum with a name change and made minor changes and led the Higher Education Commission to further deterioration.
Now some members of the National Assembly are trying to assign more powers to the commission. All matters should be discussed in the Council of Common Interests (CCI) and all relevant parties should be consulted, including teachers, provincial education commissions and above all the representatives of the students themselves. which are directly affected by educational decisions.
Some members of the assembly drafted a new law, which will be presented as a private member. The draft is in the hands of Rakim Al-Haruf, which plans to make far-reaching changes to the Higher Education Commission Act. Thus, it is intended to kill the powers that the provinces have for higher education. Very dangerous for The most important change is the plan to replace Section 10 of the existing Ordinance, in which the powers of the Commission are being extended. In this way, the rights of the provinces are being robbed and their scope will be limited.
Through this new proposed law, higher education institutions will be completely at the mercy of the commission, which will be controlled from Islamabad, leaving provincial higher education commissions and institutions helpless.
The draft of the proposed law appears to be malicious, which will complicate rather than solve the problems of the higher education sector in the country. Through another provision, the formation of the search committee for the appointment of heads of universities in the provinces can also be transferred to the Centre. Such ‘search committees’ have always been very controversial and have not yielded any good results. The old method by which one of the most senior university deans was selected was the easy way, avoiding long interviews and hundreds of applications. Now this process goes on not for weeks but for months.
So many controversial decisions and appointments have been made within the commission itself that it is surprising. Appointments from the head and executive director of the commission to lower positions have become a nightmare. The commission has not been able to find a full-time executive director for years despite repeated advertisements and then someone from the bureaucracy. is set. Temporary appointments have become the norm, further sinking the raft of higher education across the country.
Many universities do not have full-time heads and are being run by acting heads. From Quaid-e-Azam Jamia to Urdu Jamia, dozens of universities are working under the federal government, but all of them are victims of unpopular decisions made by the center and now there is talk of giving more powers to the center in the draft of the new law.
Hundreds of universities across the country are suffering due to this trend of centralization while they are not being provided adequate resources. Concentration of more powers at the center may be desired by the bureaucracy but not at all by the teachers and students. The draft of the new law also states that the commission will be able to issue directives to government officials and order even the district administration and the police to assist the commission. Through another amendment, the commission is also to be given the sole authority to set standards, which will completely suspend the provincial commissions. Now it is necessary to discuss these issues in the Council of Common Interests.
