Zulfiqar Gilani is a psychologist by training, and has worked in US and Canada as a clinical psychologist for many years. He came back to Pakistan intending to retire, but in 2001 General Musharraf formulated a task force which was to work at devising a vision for improving the higher education in Pakistan. It was co-chaired by Syed Babar Ali and Dr. Zulfiqar was a member of that task force as well as the chair of the sub-committee on vision and governance of universities. The conception of HEC came from that task force. One of the recommendations of the task force was that there should be an integrated 4-year undergraduate program in Pakistan. This podcast of Recompute wants to explore the history, process and current status of the “revamping of undergraduate curriculum 2020” project.

Where did the curricular revamping idea emerge from?

I was Vice-Chancellor of Peshawar University from 2000-2004 where I had started working on building the required integrated undergraduate curriculum, and in the meantime HEC had been officially formed in 2002. As soon as HEC sent out the notification to all universities to restructure their undergrad programs, what almost every university in Pakistan did was to combine their two-year BA and two year MA degrees into one 4 year semester-based program. I refused to do that as VC of Peshawar University, because in the initial HEC task force we really believed that the whole curriculum framework needs to be restructured so that it can meet certain objectives.

What was really amiss in the on-going programs and curriculum that the need for restructuring was felt so strongly by you?

I’ll be very practical. Barring a few students, our undergraduates were getting out with degrees for sure but none of them had acquired any worthwhile skills or competencies required of them along the way. Since I had taught in the US as well as in England, I saw the quality of undergraduates there. For a vast majority of first-world undergraduates, they don’t need to study any further, undergrad is their last degree. Whereas, in Pakistan, the piece of paper students get at the end of 16 years of education is almost valueless when they go into the market hunting for jobs. On the other hand, the capacity or potential that I saw even in Peshawar University students was at par with their counterpart students across the world. This was the same basic issue at hand that became the starting point for a need for restructuring the undergraduate curriculum at the time when HEC was formulated.

But more recently, when Tariq Banuri became the chairman HEC, he asked me what I wanted to do, and I knew exactly that we needed to revamp the core backbone of higher education – the undergraduate program. At the moment this backbone is very weak, as it gives not very useful employees to the industry, and feeds weak future-teachers to Masters, MPhil and PhD programs, creating a vicious cycle. Anyway, after rejoining HEC I asked around about the undergraduate policy in place. This was around Jan 2019, and I received a 2-pager document. It was basically a 2 year + 2 year formula, with some patch-on courses labeled as General Education courses. And they were not General Education courses at all. I tried, in vain, to get hold of any minutes of the meetings or the process through which this 2-pager policy was arrived at – I couldn’t get hold of a single such document. Thereon, I initiated a long and tedious process of meetings and consultations with important stakeholders of academia, including faculty, registrars, VCs etc. and it was heartening to know that they unanimously agreed that the current undergraduate curriculum isn’t producing the kind of successful, useful, educated individuals that the world needs – someone with technical competencies and who can have a conversation about important things in life, and who has a sense of what is going on in the world. An engineer needs to really know what the philosophers and historians have been saying, and the medical students should also be mathematically cultured. So, this is what drove us to revamp the old status-quo of single-subject focused narrow system. Now we have documentation from all of those consultation and dialogue meetings which gave birth to the revamped undergrad policy.

But what happened between the inception of the integrated curriculum idea around 2001 and 2019. How was the status-quo of the 2+2 formula set in place?

HEC just put this 2+2 template without providing any training or technical resources for how to do assessments in a semester system, for example. Secondly, and much more horribly, what was actually instituted was the creation of special allowances - all research focused: if you have a PhD you get x amount of allowance, if you publish a paper, y amount, if you supervise a PhD, z allowance etc. What this institutionalization did was to take the meaning out of what is called research, as the motivational structure got reduced to this single measurable KPI for hiring and promotion etc. This not only gave birth to plagiarism and fake journals, but more importantly, it pushed the faculty to ignore teaching, as they were being rewarded only for their research output. I have overwhelming anecdotal evidence from all my HEC consultations where almost everyone said that after the officiating of HEC, the quality of undergraduate education in Pakistan has gotten worse, as all the focus got shifted to graduate and postgraduate level. All of this confusion was a consequence of misplaced priorities, which translated to faculty policies.

But if the quality of undergraduate education in Pakistan has deteriorated because of lopsided faculty policies or the lack of teachers’ training, then why blame it all on the poor curriculum, and why only change the curricular structure?

I’ll candidly confess that we could have begun from a lot of starting points, but we began from revamping the curriculum framework, because frankly speaking, I was the one doing it. Had it been someone else, they could have started with designing teachers’ training, or another individual could have started with university and faculty regulations and policies. I do believe that starting from curriculum is a good choice, as one has to begin from somewhere, and also because the rest of the things can be aligned with the spirit of this curricular change. I’m an optimistic person.

It’s a pleasant surprise that you did not find any resistance from university stakeholders or faculty!

I don’t even blame our university faculty members who do not understand this kind of balanced undergrad, as they received a specialized subject-focused undergrad when they were students, while the best parts of the developed world had taught a holistic, balanced set of courses to their undergrad students. After receiving a specialized undergrad, most of our current faculty members went outside Pakistan for Masters and PhDs, which in any case, are specialized programs. So, it is no surprise that the kind of undergraduate program we have designed has not been experienced by most of our faculty. But in our defense, we are not reinventing the wheel at all. What works wonderfully for the better parts of the world, we are only helping create the same experience for our dear undergraduate students, so they can also become useful, conscientious citizens of the modern world.

Can you elaborate upon some of the salient features of this new revamped undergrad policy?

Foremost shift from the subject-focused previous era is that this is a student-centered policy. By that I mean that a student should be able to take admission in a university and only later on decide about the program or major based on an informed decision, as undergrad is a perfect stage in one’s life for self-exploration. Student-centered also means that we are investing in students’ long-term success, and for qualifying as a thoughtful and useful member of the modern civilization we are making the students go through a series of courses in the first couple of years. These general education courses actually promise the breadth that is the hallmark of an undergraduate education worldwide: courses from humanities such as philosophy, history, creative arts; courses from social sciences such as psychology, sociology, economics, political science; courses from natural sciences such as geology, ecology; courses that teach quantitative reasoning in today’s data-intensive world; there are also courses focused on language and writing skills; finally civilizational studies that teach about the origins of Islam as well as origins of Pakistan. Thirdly, the revamped policy especially asks the universities to teach practical and professional skills to students formally, by taking student societies and internships more seriously. These are some of the fundamental pillars on which the holistic framework stands. Understanding each pillar’s significance and their inter-relatedness is the key for moving forward. I know there are logistical issues around admissions and accreditation bodies, but while we have already devised creative alternatives for some of the logistical issues, compromising on the spirit of the holistic framework is a no-go.

Staying true to the letter and spirit of the new policy, are there any creative workarounds for very large and very old establishments, especially the large public universities?

We’re already thinking of relaxing the policy for admissions to university; for instance, an engineering related student can be admitted to a specific school, but there should be proper transfer mechanisms in place if the student later wants to transfer to any other program, school wide or university wide, given that the student has done well in related General education courses, in 12th grade, and in related admission test components. Secondly, instead of pushing all the 12-13 general education courses in the first 2 or so semesters, we are okay if some of the courses are spread across the 4 years, creating more room for subject-specific courses early on as well. Lastly, even though we have defined the spirit of each general education course, and also rolled out their model course outlines, but staying true to the definitions of sub-categories, spirit of the policy and also to the two guiding principles of the policy – freedom of expression and academic honesty – any university can create their own set of general education courses. One public university, NUST, and some of the good private universities like LUMS at Lahore, Habib at Karachi and Namal at Mianwali were already working along similar curricular directions before we launched this revamping of undergraduate education policy. But bear in mind, HEC has the mandate to improve the higher education quality across the entire country. I wish other universities also creatively embrace the change keeping in view the long-term success of their students.

Speaking of creativity, perhaps another way to inculcate the historical lens within students could have been to design every course, even the technical ones, such that it touches historical perspective within its content, instead of teaching just one course on history separately. Is that too ideal for HEC?

For reasons I don’t want to go into, most of our faculty has lost the ability of designing and developing proper syllabi. Most of our faculty takes one textbook, and chapter by chapter copying or mapping of the textbook becomes the course.

If this is the unfortunate state of affairs of the majority that is going to deliver this new revamped undergraduate curriculum, how have you ensured that the same history is not going to repeat itself? With the previous 2+2 formula, and despite almost all universities fulfilling ranking bodies’ checklists (number of PhDs, departments, course offerings, research papers etc), they were obviously failing to produce quality students. How will the situation of treating this new revamped set of ideals as just another HEC imposed checklist change?

I’ll give you a few examples of what HEC is doing differently this time around. The World Bank has approached us and with their support, the idea to develop learning objectives based milestones, year-wise, to go hand in hand with the revamped curriculum is underway. Secondly, with Tariq Banuri at the helm of affairs, I have one person who completely understands this project, and wants to see it succeed. He formed the Post-secondary Education Reform Unit, which I’m heading. So, in parallel to designing the curriculum, we are designing capacity building activities for faculty, focused on pedagogy. We’re tying this up with the World Bank agreement. Another very important capacity building exercise is focused on policy implementation. These supplementary exercises need to be carried out in a systematic manner, going forward. But having said this, I still believe that the younger lot of faculty members within our universities, once given this fresh curricular perspective, will channel their positive creative forces in the right direction, to effect a positive change.

Just like HEC is thinking of capacity building regarding curriculum policy implementation, don’t you think that HEC also needs to revamp the faculty policies in order to make the revamped curriculum a success, as the lopsided selection, appraisal and promotion policies have taken the emphasis within universities away from teaching a solid undergraduate program, and faculty members are forced by these lopsided policies to give more time to their Masters and PhD students, in order to prove their research-worthiness?

I respect Dr. Tariq Banuri a lot, as he’s a man of integrity and a true intellectual, and with him at the helm of affairs we have already been talking about these issues, and thinking of a 40-40-20 framework, which is an international norm. The policies, departments and faculty members give 40 percent weight to teaching as well as their research scholarship and 20 percent to their university services. Right now, there is no policy, almost everyone is counting the number of publications. In an ideal world, every faculty should be able to have his/her own contract based on different weightages assigned to teaching, research and services, but since I have also served as a bureaucrat in my past, I do know the importance of bureaucracy in any organization, but I also know that wherever the bureaucratic efficacy takes precedence over the purpose and mission of the organization things start deteriorating, which is what has happened to Pakistani universities, as well as HEC. In this regard, HEC, again in collaboration with the World Bank, is going to revamp the Quality Enhancement Cells (QEC) within universities, as they have only become quantity and administration-focused, interventionist and monitoring cells, which isn’t really helping the cause of education. It seems that everyone has lost sight of the fact that in a university, the most important stakeholder is the student, then the faculty, then the administration and VCs, and HEC and accreditors are at the very bottom – not the other way around. We are developing the right set of ToRs to reset QECs’ direction within universities. With these supplementary revamps, it is hoped that the curricular revamp will be effective.

I would also like to highlight again that in addition to curricular changes, the implementation of the new policy requires universities to establish three new offices: office of academic advisement for students, office of internship and placement, and office of extra-curricular activities. HEC has already allocated and rolled out a budget to 16 universities for the establishment of these offices within their campuses. I know that the best private universities in Pakistan have been those who already have had their focus on these 3 areas before HEC asked them to revamp. For the rest of Pakistan, we have asked the universities to get their houses in order till Fall of 2022.

We believe our dialogue today has converged wonderfully to the conclusion that HEC could have initiated the process of change from any one of a number of aspects, but curriculum seems to be just the right choice. With this, and with the supplementary capacity building exercises in the pipeline, it is hoped that universities will take further required steps in the right direction and align their QECs and faculty policies to the effect of making this curricular change a success for themselves and their students!