My Experience with the Education System of Pakistan

Hello everyone. I am Farrukh Hijaz and I will be writing on this blog from now on. To start with, I will be writing a 3 part article series on Education System of Pakistan. Today’s article will be about my own experience with the system. It will be followed by a general overview of the pre-university education available in Pakistan and the huge divide in the different systems implemented in the country. Finally I will be looking into the university education systems. In the last article I will discuss the differences between different universities and something more specific to my own university i.e. NUST-SEECS…

I remember when I was a kid, I used to go to school and learn things by heart. I memorized questions and answers and aced exams after exams. Advancing through the classes, I just did the same i.e. memorized things for a short period of time and passed my exams in flying colors. Our school had a computer subject from class 6 onward till class 8. We were taught QBASIC in those classes. I remember that we even memorized the computer programs (which were around 10-15 lines each). Time went on, I reached class 9. It was time for Board Exams. We were supposed to understand and solve the paper. I can easily claim that a huge majority of the class just memorized whatever came in their way and reproduced it accurately during the exams. I was one of them as well. Although I did understand Computer Science and Maths pretty well, I just memorized all the proofs in Physics without knowing what it really meant. And then we got into college. By now our minds were supposedly mature enough to grasp the knowledge and basic concepts. It was time for us to understand and gain knowledge and leave behind the “Rata System”. But, it was all the same. The exams were made in such a way that you got to memorize stuff and only those people got marks that were able to reproduce the stuff as it was written in the book or notes.

I have a friend who has done O/A-levels. I used to discuss the education system with him. I realized that we have a lot to learn from their system. Their course is made in such a way that the student have to understand the concepts. The exams are made such that it tests the basic problem solving ability and main concepts of a student. We can easily sit down and analyze what’s wrong but I doubt anyone is willing to do so. We need to realize that we are doing something wrong and that we need a change. Let’s hope that we live long enough to see that much needed change.

A new era began for me when I got admission in NUST. I was lucky enough to be taught by one of the best Calculus teacher present in SEECS. Thanks to him, I was able to cover the deficiencies in Maths. But then there still was room of huge improvements in other subjects. I saw different kind of teachers here at NUST. Some brilliant while other just OK and there were some from whom I never gained any knowledge. Some of the teachers taught us real knowledge, made us use our minds while others just kept on going with the same old system i.e. memorize and reproduce…

One thing that I noticed was that I never felt a problem in getting good grades in those subjects in which I had developed interest. But getting a good grade in subjects in whom I had no interest was a gigantic task. Now, I realized that my interest in a subject was heavily dependent on the teaching style of the teacher. I was lucky that I got very capable and qualified teachers in most of my relevant and core subjects. But others were not so lucky… During my bachelor’s studies, I felt that too much emphasis was given on getting grades rather than learning, too much emphasis was given on theory rather than practical skills. I think more emphasis should have been on lab work and projects. Also, the marks division should have been such that it should have forced the students to concentrate more on their practical skills.

This is what I feel about the education system that I went through. Pakistan has got a lot of talent, a lot of untapped brain power. BUT it is all going to a waste. We need to change our education system or face the music. The world today, as it stands, is controlled by those who have knowledge. Our progress and prosperity is solely based on educating our next generation, THE RIGHT WAY. So, let’s start thinking about how we can bring about a change. We can start by spreading awareness. So let’s spread the word and start working towards a better Pakistan…

Comments, suggestions and criticisms are welcomed in the comments sections…

An email from an ex-gikian visiting NUST .

Its EMAIL time again! These past few days have kept me gelled to my inbox which, by the way, I rarely opened in my university time . I must admit I am getting "obsessed" with emails these days. Side-effects of joblessness ? Maybe...

Its been a long time since I engaged in the never-ending childish debate of the "BEST UNIVERSITY" of Pakistan. But after so many years, does anyone really "still" care out there about this?

The answer to that is apparently yes! We have over here an email forwarded to me by a friend (ex-Gikian) and written by a proud, proud gikian.

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To: giki-alumni@yahoogroups.com

From: ********************************** { I am keeping the email address private }

Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:32:23 +0500

Subject: [alumni] THE BEST UNIVERSITY OF PAKISTAN.

Friends,

Today I had the oppurtunity to visit NUST open house on behalf of my company where I was advised to hire an intern for our deparment. Over the past few years, I have heard rumblings to the fact that how NUST has overtaken and left giki far far behind. So here is the story of today.

I reached NUST with the images of grand function and grand project I must confess that i was really really afraid that open house would be something amazin.

However to my initial relief, open house was being held in a "tambo", As i tried to enter the tambo open house and i was promptly asked to remove my behind from there as the arena was not "officially" opened by the Chief Guest and I was promptly shipped to another "tambo" where chief guest was being received. Made to sit there for about 20 minutes the chief guest finally arrived. Everyone stood up and rushed to receive the "Chief Guest". Then the Dean in his welcome speech went on and on about how his 'hollyness' the chief guest had graced the occasion by coming. Bored by all what I called "School Standard Parents Day speech by the Principal" , I decided to go out for a Cigarette.

As i stood there having my cigarette, finally happy that i was away from the nauseating buttering of the chief guest, i was accosted by a sombre looking person and was asked in these exact words and slightly rudely.

Person: "App Kaun hai "

Me: "Ji mein BHP Petroleum se aya ho for open house

Person: "Acha Acha. Pur baat yeah ke app under ja ke bethay"

Me: Cigg pe kar jata ho

Person: Nahin App abhi jai

Slightly embarassed and little angry, I was shipped once again to the tambo. Well, after listening to about 30 minutes of ********* (censored) from the Dean and then the Chief Guest we were finally allowed to enter the "tambo" where supposedly the projects of the open house were being displayed.

Well to my amazement only two stalls were allocated to final year projects while the rest of the space was taken up by NWO, NESPAK, NLC, GUNJ GLASS, etc etc. I decided to go ahead and talk to the student with final year projects, as my objective was to hire an internee for this year. While I was standing on one of the two stalls allocated to the students, I was once again accosted by another somber looking person and was told in these words.

Person: "App Zara yaha se hut jai kyu ke chief guest ab is stall pur ana walay hai"

Extremely pissed i decided to give this person piece of my mind . After which I left the tambo open house and nust altogether and came back without hiring the internee.

Now you all must be thinking who this VVIP chief guest was so here is the last kicker. He was the Rector of NUST.

So u can guess which is still the best uni in pak and what is over hyped military *********.[censored]

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And there we have it ! After eons and eons of futile bragging , we still cant get over the euphoria about studying in GIKI, NUST etc. In reality, a great school is that that helps you learn, really learn, something constructive irrespective of the hype . Plus it "may" help you find a job as well!

This email, however, has some valid points and some exaggerations. I have always talked and written about how NUST events lack the glitter, opulence and marketing which is required by a leading University. Perhaps that is something NUST can learn from LUMS, but seriously not Giki. Its also a reminder to how we should treat people from the industry when ever we arrange an open-house. This guy perhaps visited EME and not H-12 which is a bit more friendly to civilians.

However we also have an email from a very energetic Nustian who replied:

"Nothing is wrong with NUST. Its just that Mr. Shah Hussain was having a very bad day!

And we should not promote/support propaganda against NUST as this guy has done by posting it on the yahoo group (giki-alumni@yahoogroups.com).Every university has certain problems and short comings, and we are still the number one university of Pakistan. Mr. Hussain should approach PEC/HEC, if he thinks the rankings are wrong.Proud to be a NUSTian." Ahmad Mustafa .

Ahmad bhai, its always good to highlight your weaknesses and improve them and not sit in a fool's paradise. But I agree no one is perfect, not even us.


And I request all to take this email as satire and not an invitation for a brawl ;)

Wasalaam

Usman

An open letter to rector NUST.

* The following email was posted to all  students of seecs, faculty of NBS , faculty of SEECS ,rector, Pro-rector and respective DGs of most NUST schools. We got some encouraging promises , some criticisms and some calls for anger management.Its highly unlikely anything fruitful will come out , unless we all make our voice heard


Respected Sir,

On 6^th of November a new era began in our lives. A momentous occasion in our lives, it was our convocation.  It was to be the beginning of something special , something divine . But perhaps that something special never came to fruition. It was a wonderful opportunity to come around and meet each other after a duration of about four months.  While we were happy to meet each other , something wasn’t right. The atmosphere looked gloomy. We were sitting together and waiting to get our degrees from a prestigious Pakistani university, yet we strangely felt betrayed. We felt betrayed because when we imagined our counterparts in other parts of the world who went to their countries’ leading universities, we could not imagine them being jobless(for everyone who wants to see what joblessness means). The predicament that we were in was hard to comprehend. How many people in this world graduate from top schools and remain unemployed?  Sadly for us we are one of those unlucky people.

Whatever our destiny has decided for us we are willing to accept. But we donot only hold destiny accountable for all of this. We strongly believe they are a lot of issues in this university which need to be addressed for the potential survival of future graduates. We do know that the economy is stagnant and there is a lot of saturation in the Electrical/Electronics field. This however has not stopped universities such as IST and CASE from helping their graduates getting hired. This suggests surely there is more work that can be done to market our graduates.

Suggestions:

Please make a career development department with COMPETENT people who place CV’s of all graduates into the HR departments of leading companies. This department must have contact numbers,addresses of most companies in Pakistan .  This career department should also have a up to date website with vacancies in various fields being shown so that alumni can check out if a job is available that suits them. The department must have contacts with the HR departments of various companies so that a vacancy could immediately be notified. Some might say that this is already being done. Please note the present performance of the career development office is farcical and they are in almost no contact with the alumni

The second thing that is required for a graduate in these testing times is a versatile skill set . This can only be achieved when courses are allowed to be picked and dropped at will across various disciplines . The reason why this is not being applied is not comprehensible by us , but it is the need of the hour and if we fail to allow this the future graduates will suffer a worse fate than us.

The third thing which we strongly believe needs to be done is to improve the quality of projects we do in our campuses. We believe that our graduates lack the finishing touch where our peers in leading universities around the world do possess.  We very arrogantly talk about Stanford, Caltech but we fail to emulate their study models over here. If we visit the website of MIT open courseware , we can see that almost all engineering subjects have a forty percent weightage for projects and a similar weightage for LABS . Exams meanwhile have a very small weightage. This suggests that only through practical work can we really gain knowledge with a finishing touch . Theoretical Knowledge is like reading a story which you are never really part of. We must also focus on cross disciplinary projects because in all sincerity any practical project has to be cross disciplinary in nature.  A robot without software is useless, and you certainly can’t expect electrical engineers to create software for you.

Fourthly, the industry cares less about what we learn in the university and emphasizes more on hands on experience on equipment by specific hardware manufacturers example Allan Bradley, Siemens, Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and Huawei. Please hold constant practical workshops of these companies because in the end workshops like these do help one to gain practical experience.

As far as research is concerned, we strongly believe there is limited research being done that can really change Pakistan. In fact, in many cases we do not need research but we only need design and analysis to solve Pakistan’s problems. Unless we help our society to reach the top we surely can’t expect this university to change anything. We expect faculty members to lead projects that can potentially change Pakistan. Just to mention over here , Dr Rehan Hafiz recently floated a project in which electricity is being produced by the kinetic movement of cars which can be used to light up traffic signals. Such innovative projects when properly assigned to a cross disciplinary team lead by a faculty member will give rise to the much touted “entrepreneurship” term . Such a project perhaps does not require cutting edge research as this technology is readily available , but what it requires is a will and vision , which perhaps we lack. Research for the sake of attracting dollars is useless to Pakistan as a whole. The need of research shall arise when we reach a problem for which a solution already does not exist. In our case , all the solutions do exist. Unless we change our priorities, we really can never become great and we really can never become a knowledge based economy. The other plus side is that this will create more jobs for our graduates and more revenue for the university.


The other day an ambitious prospective Nustian came to us and asked enthusiastically about Nust . We could not help but guide him for the better and we thought maybe Nust is not the best option right now . This perhaps is the beginning of a trend , a trend that can sadly see Nust lose its charm and glory unless it acts to change things.

In all this we aim to help our university improve and help the future graduates more easily tackle the job market. We hope to hear from your side soon to further discuss the suggestions.