Needed: A National Dialogue on Science, Technology, Research and Higher/Basic Education

In this article I would like to stress upon an important theme of public policy in general and science, technology, and research policy in particular. Before I would take this up, however, I would like to motivate the topic by citing one example that has unfolded last year before our very eyes, namely, the Pakistan government’s effort to bring about reform within the higher education sector in Pakistan. These reform efforts—although noble in their intention—have turned out to be below-par in terms of their ultimate impact on encouraging the country’s higher education sector towards better performance in teaching and research. While the policymakers did put in effort to put together what they thought was a “model” for higher education institutions and universities in Pakistan, they abysmally failed at assessing the “political” and “social” dimensions of the said policy with the result being that under the guise of sometimes valid and sometimes invalid arguments, the whole exercise failed to reach its mark and collapsed under the weight of its own good intentions. The policy was ferociously rejected by none other than its target audience—the academic community itself—whom it claimed to be benefiting in the first place. In the words of one of the distinguished gentlemen who helped shape the higher education reform effort, “Lets leave everything in the Model University Ordinance aside, what I don’t understand is that what is wrong with doubling the salaries of people working in academia in Pakistan. Why should people reject that?”. And yet, it was these very people who rejected the entire policy package and aligned themselves in the favor of the status quo. What went wrong with the Model University Ordinance has something to do with the ordinance itself but also perhaps equally to do with the manner in which it was “imposed” upon the academic scene in Pakistan. Herein lies the central theme of today’s article.

Good policies, even great policies, that fail to anticipate an entire array of political, institutional, and social dimensions often fail to make their mark and run the risk of gathering dust in government bureaucracies. This is especially true with the science and technology, research, and academic/education communities where the strongest incentives are intrinsic, not extrinsic/financial, and that thrive on academic freedom and flexibility. Our policy planners failed to realize that the scientific and academic communities worldwide disdain government regulation and intervention and believe in self- and peer-regulation as a means for improving quality and punishing sub-standard scholarship and research. True, that there are several weaknesses in the peer-regulation model as practiced worldwide, and granted that we have to go a long way before the scientific, technological, research, and academic community in Pakistan could reach the ideal of a “self-regulating” community that is continuously innovating and striving to improve but that does not nullify the fact that freedom and flexibility still remain critical to the intellectual and creative output we expect from it. Our policy planners did not take into account the fact that a reform movement within the scientific and academic community—if it were to have even a slightest chance of succeeding—must develop from within the community itself rather than be imposed from above. While the government could have had a facilitating role in this entire exercise, bulk of the debate and consensus building should have been done by the community itself without the heavy-handed involvement of the government.

What seriously went wrong in the overall scheme of things was the absence of the voice—the most important voice—of the people engaged in scientific, technological, research and education communities, whose very actions in-effect drive the translation of policies into results on the ground. A National Policy Dialogue on these issues is definitely warranted. What would such a dialogue do? And how should it be conducted? The first and foremost step in creating such a dialogue is to encourage the “people in the trenches”—the real professionals engaged in scientific and technological creation, research, higher and basic/primary education—to come forward with ideas aimed at improving the state of affairs in these respective fields of endeavor. While there is an uncanny calm on the surface, there is great vitality beneath this calm. People working in these areas are often the ones with the best local knowledge and insights of making things happen and doing them right in the first place. What they lack—and our political and institutional culture fails to provide them with—is an audience for these ideas. The first step, therefore, in creating a National Policy Dialogue is to that provide real professionals and other stakeholders with a forum to bring forth their “hands-on” assessment of the situation and creative and pragmatic ideas to change things for the better.

This idea generation effort must then lead into a professional debate that may be conducted formally under the aegis of various fora e.g. the Higher Education Commission, the Academy of Sciences, the policy organizations, seminars and conferences etc. and informally in the faculty rooms and corridors of our research and academic institutions. An intellectual dialogue of this nature is critical to reaching a consensus among the various stakeholders on where they should be heading and what needs to be done to get there. In the democratic order of the academic community a consensus policy that reflects a “compromise” and only achieves 25% of the ideal target is better than an excellent policy that gets subverted and fails to see the light of the day. Reform and progress, in this slow moving arena where it often takes several decades—even centuries—to build world-class institutions, happens one brick at a time. More importantly, reform can only come from within—through the actions of hundreds of us who are willing to become “agents of change” in our own limited ways, provided these individual actions can be supported and nurtured, wherever possible.

The final step of this bottom-up reform effort would be create an environment for the implementation of these ideas. This can be facilitated through the creation of a national repository of reformatory ideas that must then be made available for the wider audiences—the respective communities, policymakers, institutional leaders, political leaders, and the citizen at large—to learn, discuss, and adopt from. We’re fortunate to be living in times where it is possible, almost effortlessly, to put all of this together through the Internet. A vast majority of scientific and technological community and the research and higher education community are connected to the web where they can interact with others, publish their ideas, and comment upon those put forth by their colleagues. These ideas can then be picked up by self-forming communities of reform or by people in positions of power who can implement and make things happen. One such effort is being put into motion today.

VTTP National Policy Dialogues Series on Science & Technology Policy and Education Reform

A National Policy Dialogues Series is being organized by members of Virtual Think Tank Pakistan (VTTP)—a 200+ member group of Pakistani professionals worldwide joined together by their desire to create a “Better” Pakistan through “careful collaborative thinking, and well-reasoned local action”—and Pakistan Research Support Network (PRSN)—a 1000+ member community of Pakistani researchers and research students working for the creation of a strong research-base in Pakistan. The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) and Pakistan Council for Science and Technology (PCST) are the co-collaborators of the exercise. Engro Chemicals Pakistan Ltd is the key sponsor. The purpose of this National Policy Dialogue Series is to invite a wide spectrum of Pakistani professionals— scientists, engineers, academics, educationists, journalists, policymakers, politicians, government servants, expatriates, students, or concerned citizen of Pakistan—to reflect upon and participate in national policymaking on science and technology, research, higher education and basic/primary education sectors.

Our desire and endeavor is to encourage “people in the trenches”—the real professionals who are best armed with knowledge of ground realities and insights about Pakistan’s complex problems—to take up the critical task of self-reflection and reformation through scholarship, debate and implementation. In the first part of this exercise, individuals are requested to write 5-page policy papers on various issues relating to S&T, Research and Education policies of Pakistan. We are really interested in new and innovative yet pragmatic ideas presented in the context of well-researched understanding of the various background issues. Individuals are strongly encouraged to think creatively (“out-of-the-box”) about solutions of known problems, identify new and/or less-publicized problems, or present a well-researched (or experience-based) assessment of an already well-known issue/problem.

A number of critical issues need discussion and resolution at this level. These include, among others: How might the performance of the Higher Education sector be improved? What are some of the alternate governance models of Higher Education institutes in Pakistan? How might the public sector research funding programs be established for maximum impact? Should the public sector funding programs exclude or include private sector educational institutes? How might the government encourage R&D activity within the private sector in Pakistan? How might the fruits of public sector R&D be best commercialized for private benefit? How might Pakistan balance its desire to go high-tech. (e.g. IT, materials, biotech etc.) with the need for technology development in traditional areas (e.g. Textiles, agriculture, medicine etc.)? How might information and communications technology be used to spur development (ICT4D) and reduce poverty? How might various actors (e.g. government, private sector, NGOs, citizen groups, community organizations) come together for the cause of universal basic/primary education in Pakistan? And how might a uniform quality curriculum be developed within primary/basic institutions in Pakistan to rid the country of the multiple streams of education? A number of themes and sub-themes are being suggested. These include:

• Higher Education Reform: What Went Wrong? How to Fix it?
• Practical and Innovative Approaches to promoting a Performance Culture in Higher Education
• What should be the Science and Technology Policy Priorities/Actions for Pakistan?
• What Topical Areas of Research, Science & Technology should Pakistan Stress Upon and why?
• Practical & Creative ways of marketing Pakistan (the brand) and its Research/Technology abroad?
• Practical Models for Delivering Universal Basic & Primary Education in Pakistan.
• Practical & Innovative Approaches to Reforming Basic/Primary Education in Pakistan

We strongly encourage interested individuals to visit the competition’s website (http://npds.vttp.org) to look at the detailed solicitation document and writers’ guidelines for sub-topics and other competition rules before submitting their papers to policydialogues@vttp.org. The closing deadline for the competition is August 14, 2004 but papers would be reviewed on a rolling basis (each month) so contestants are encouraged to send in papers as early as possible. Substantial prize money (Rs. 25,000, Rs. 15,000 and Rs. 10,000 as well as several plaques and certificates) would be awarded to the winning papers to encourage professionals to write their ideas and perspectives on these important issues. While this prize money only compensates for the time spent in writing a polished 5-page draft paper, the real benefit to the participants would come in other ways—most important of them being the satisfaction of having their ideas reach to the top-most levels in science, technology, research, and education policymaking in Pakistan. All entries would be available at the competition’s website which would act as central repository of reform ideas as well as a means to create a dialogue between stakeholders. Finalists (several papers in each of the seven categories) may be printed in leading national newspapers. Depending upon the level of response to the exercise, a National Conference of Idea Champions may also be convened to allow the writers to present their ideas to leading policymakers in these areas.

This exercise, we hope, would set the ball rolling in creating a national intellectual/policy dialogue on these issues of national importance from which creative and pragmatic ideas of reform would be generated and a consensus on what needs to be done would emerge. At the culmination of the dialogue, the policymakers in the Higher Education Commission and Pakistan Council for Science and Technology would be presented with policy recommendations that, we believe, would represent the aspirations and ideals of these communities, would be pragmatic and practical, and would hold the promise of true and far-reaching reform in these areas. Only a consensus-driven reform effort that is based on a realistic assessment of the status-quo and a practical and sensible vision of the future can result in reinvigorating of the scientific and academic community in the country. Lets take our first steps on this road less traveled by letting our voice become a part of the National Policy Dialogues Series.