The road forward
Pakistan today faces a myriad of problems that range from poor governance systems, lack of proper long-term planning, uncontrolled increase in population, and water shortages to a poor educational system,…
Obituaries of haste
Heath Streak was a fine Zimbabwean cricketer who died young recently after completing 50 years in this transitory world. In a macabre reflection of where the media’s anticipatory tendencies have…
Why Bob Dylan matters
One of my pleasures in visiting our elder daughter in southern California is to feel the warmth and glory of the cultural environment of Los Angeles. It is surely not…
Leading without a plan
Public universities are facing multiple challenges that we keep hearing about, ranging in nature from academic, administrative, managerial, financial, and political. Some of them may not be addressable by universities…
Restructuring academia
The faculty at Pakistani universities is extremely busy. Its only priority seems to be ‘research publications’ as the number of research articles published has become an important criterion to gauge…
A decade of CPEC
In recent times, hardly has any other strategy or initiative gained any such global limelight than Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The US’s Build Back Better…
What should VCs be worried about?
Today’s university vice-chancellors (VCs) are facing a number of challenges. The number one challenge by far that universities are grappling with, particularly after the presentation of the 2023-24 federal budget…
Dreams of disruption
Some people like superhero movies while others prefer horror movies. My favourite category of movies (and TV series) are tales of founders of companies that built the world we live…
HEC: the good and the bad
The Higher Education Commission (HEC) boasts of the unprecedented development it has brought in the country’s higher education sector. Statistics such as the increase in the number of PhDs and…
The AI debate in education
Large Language Models (LLMs), the guts of chatbots (with a lowercase ‘c’) like ChatGPT, are having their moment right now. The rise of chatbots has brought forth numerous debates on…
