Revamping PhD programmes in Pakistan
TO anyone with a comparative perspective and a genuine desire to see the flourishing of an intellectual culture in Pakistan, it would be clear that we are currently producing few…
Bottom of the pile
LAST semester, an acquaintance taught, as adjunct faculty, a course at a very well-known and probably the best public sector university in the country. The ‘per hour’ payment that he…
The admissions game
International applicants to post-graduate (PG) programmes (doctoral programmes in particular) at universities in developed countries have long understood that having even a single research paper to one’s name gives them…
In support of a tiered university system
The seeds of California’s public university system – as it is today – were sowed in 1960, with the California Master Plan. The plan aimed to combine exceptional quality and…
Untangling the HEC’s timeline
All the problems of the higher education sector are being laid at the feet of the HEC management being pushed out before the end of its term, by means of…
PhD holder and unemployed
UNIVERSITIES, the 200 or so registered and formal ones, and many more institutions working as colleges, affiliated institutions and/or as coaching centres, find it hard to hire qualified and competent…
Jhang and Jhangvis
Until then, a dust storm was not just a dust storm; it was a sign of the wrath of the Almighty over the murder of some innocent person. Until then,…
Move towards better policymaking
According to a recent analysis of Scimago, the world’s leading database of scholarly literature and analytics, Pakistan has witnessed remarkable advancements in the last twenty years in international research rankings…
The new higher-ed reality
A few days ago, pharmacy students at Bacha Khan University Charsadda (BKUC) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa protested that, even after years, their programme has not been registered and accredited by the…
Commercializing research
A study of Scopus, the world’s most comprehensive, multidisciplinary database of scholarly literature, data, and analytics reveals astonishingly positive figures about the progress made in the quality and quantum of…
