Education budget
THE government announcement, in the budget 2007-08, to raise the education outlay to four per cent of the GDP to improve the declining standard of education is a welcome move but not sufficient to rehabilitate the facade of the system that has been badly vandalised over the years due to sheer mismanagement of the resources allocated to the educational sector, rampant corruption and maladministration.
Available data suggests that despite high spending, enrolment has decreased in the public sector educational institutions.
At the moment we are spending less than two per cent of the GDP, which is considered peanut in the light of educational budget of our neighbours. India spends 3.5 per cent, Sri Lanka spends about five per cent and Bangladesh about four per cent, and their standard of education is far better than that of ours.
Personally I think this is a misplaced notion on the part of the government that with the injection of more liquidity the standard of education will improve. Increasing educational budget is a good thing but this does not serve as panacea as we have seen in the past that the injection of more liquidity has led to more corruption in the absence of a viable system of checks and balances, which can only be attained if there is efficient but democratic system of governance.
For example, Shah Abdul Latif University has suffered much in terms of its physical and human development. Most of the critics attribute such predicament to the increasing financial indiscipline and deviation from the codal formalities.
For instance, the special audit 2002, released recently, accuses the university of flaws and instances of misappropriation, nonobservance of codal requirements, etc. While cataloguing the details, the report maintained that there had been total of 50 cases of misappropriation, fraud and doubtful cases amounting to Rs703.359 million, 71 cases of violations of rules and nine cases of non-production of record.
The audit reports carried out during the years 2003-2004, 2004-2005 also accuse the university administration of misappropriation and failings in reconciling the accounts with the bank.
As a matter of fact, the only way to check such irregularities could be through computerisation of data and reconciliation with bank accounts to which university has so far turned a blind eye.
In the country where universities are allegedly auctioned like police stations and the highest bidder is appointed as vice chancellor, the proliferation of corruption is not an unusual thing to happen. But if the government wants to raise the standard of education in the country, it has to change its policies and treat the universities as centres of learning and research instead of using them as job factories to recruit the workers of political parties and appoint them as teachers and researchers.
To turn universities into centres of knowledge, however, it is imperative to initiate sweeping administrative reforms under which the appointment of the vice-chancellor must be made on merit rather than political consideration as political interference has ruined educational institutions, resulting in the declining standard of education and diminishing enrolment.
This can be judged from the fact that recently the Higher Education Commission has spent about Rs70 million on the strengthening of the Department of Computer Science, Shah Abdul Latif University, but shockingly no student has turned up for admission this year. The apparent reason is the poor standard of teaching and the practice of favouritism and nepotism while recruiting teachers.
By:
MANZOOR ALI ISRAN