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Problems of Leadership and Reform in Pakistan
S. Zulfiqar Gilani
S. Zulfiqar Gilani is director of the Centre for Higher Education Transformation. Address: Centre for Higher Education Transformation, First Floor, Waheed Plaza, 52-W, Blue Area, Islamabad, Pakistan. E-mail: director@chet.edu.pk.
The process of reforming higher education in Pakistan started with great optimism and energy in early 2001 and gathered momentum during the following two years but seems to have hit a rocky road since. While there are a multiple reasons for the prevailing situation, I see the single most important factor that hampered positive change as the individual limitations of the key leaders, including the vice chancellors. Those who were expected to lead the reform, barring exceptions, exhibited a lack of vision and understanding, as well as the requisite qualities.
The reform effort in higher education in Pakistan gathered momentum during three years, from 2001 through 2003, spurred on by the 2000 World Bank-UNESCO report, Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise. In Pakistan, the Task Force for Improving Higher Education (TF) and the subsequent Steering committee on Higher Education (SCHE)-in both of which I served as an active member-spearheaded the effort.
The Inner Sanctum
To begin with, most individuals in the two groups established to conceptualize and develop a road map for reforms, largely failed to rise up to their tasks. The members’ approach to the deliberations remained oppositional and subversive, rather than facilitative. The individuals had been selected by virtue of their positions held or some related factors. We were anyhow caught up in a paradox: most of us were likely to lose in one way or another, if and when the reforms were implemented. Those benefiting from the chaotic system were tasked to change it in a manner that could hurt their interests, which could undermine the very efforts the two groups were supposed to further. Despite the difficulties, the TF managed to produce a set of radical recommendations that, if implemented as envisaged, could bring about a sea change for the better.
Stakeholder Resistance
Of the many reforms proposed by the TF, a central one was to change the governance and management of universities, to make them more autonomous and introduce transparency and accountability into their administrative functioning. Here the main battles emerged with the chancellors, vice chancellors, and some senior members of the education bureaucracy. The chancellors foresaw an erosion of their unchecked powers. Most of the vice chancellors were concerned because the proposed reforms envisaged a transparent process of selection, a system of accountability of their performance, and checks on the blanket emergency powers they enjoyed. The systematization of university governance would similarly erode the power of the education bureaucracy.
Outwardly, all of them lamented the dire state of affairs in higher education and supported reform, as the pressure for that was coming from the highest authorities. However, behind the scenes their resistance to change was dogged and, unfortunately, effective. They clouded issues by quoting precedence, and raising legalistic and/or procedural constraints. Their opposition was informed by the mindset that the state and its various organs must have hegemony and control, despite evidence that in Pakistan the outmoded functioning of the state is the problem that stifles the establishment of good governance and credible and efficient institutions. Their position was that a better implementation, by “good” people, of prevailing procedures and systems will solve the problems.
Leadership Deficit
The TF had recommended that the arena for reform should be the universities, and as a corollary the figure of the vice chancellor emerged as the linchpin for taking forward the reforms. However, the appointment of the vice chancellor is the prerogative of the chancellor, and amazingly there are no criteria for this appointment, nor is there any transparent process that could ensure merit. Consequently, we have many vice chancellors who are not the best leaders-many not having been academics to begin with. Nevertheless, appointment as a vice chancellor bestows considerable executive powers on the person, and she or he has a key role in the trajectory of institutional functioning. Unfortunately, most are averse to learning and change. Their decisions and actions are primarily informed by what they consider would please the higher-ups, the desire to retain their positions, and secondarily with professional or institutional requirements. Thus, the most critical positions of higher education management are occupied by individuals who may not be too suitable for the job, are inwardly anxious and insecure, and lack the necessary qualities to provide credible leadership. The rather whimsical methods of their appointment, and the conditions of service; their lack of vision, confidence in themselves; and low institutional or professional commitment-all combine to make a pessimistic mix for reform.
Conclusion
The reform effort in Pakistan was derailed because of two crucial weaknesses. First, the overall mode of state functioning, policymaking, and governance is top-down, nontransparent, and rigidly hierarchical. That mindset bedevils reform in higher education, in general, and the manner in which universities function, in particular. For example, the TF had recommended that to drive and facilitate the reform effort, an apex Higher Education Commission should be established, which was done in late 2002. However, the commission is functioning like any other Pakistani bureaucracy. Second, at the microlevel, the leadership of institutions of higher learning is extremely weak. As indicated above, the leaders remained largely opposed to reform, and concern for improvements in institutional functioning remains a low priority. Initially the majority of vice chancellors felt obliged to go along with the flow, they kept making the right noises at the right times and places but bided their time and tried to do as little as absolutely necessary. As the fervor for change started waning, the beginning of which was around late 2002, the old attitudes were reasserted. Those for the status quo but adept at the game of position, reascended; and, in an ironic twist, those who championed reform were marginalized or ended up on the defensive: proving once again that in Pakistan the winning approach is doing the least, mouthing the right things, and staying the course of the status quo. The unfortunate upshot is that the reform process that was initiated with fanfare has largely come to naught and, some argue, has made the situation worse. The broader lesson that our case illustrates is that the determinants of the outcomes of such efforts are the commitment, honesty of purpose, and know-how of key actors; and the wider psychosocial and political context that shape and inform their decisions and actions.
[Online] Available:
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number42/p22_Gilani.htm
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