On University rankings / quality of education

http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?161093

The HEC recently launched university rankings and it led to a debate about the quality of higher education in Pakistan. But, how do we define quality education? And unless we do that, all efforts to improve will remain misguided, like a journey without a well-defined destination.

Educational quality is a difficult concept. The goal is to produce world-class graduates. Universities have to be geared up to do that. It takes a world-class university to produce a world-class graduate. The creation is a reflection of the creator and graduates are created by universities.

What makes MIT better at technical education? Universities` quality is based on the quality of teachers and students they can attract and retain. All else is just frivolous detail. MIT is better because it can attract, retain and develop the best brains for teaching and learning. A university would do well to gear its processes to this end.

Teaching and learning are highly creative processes and cannot be standardised beyond a certain limit. The problem facing our universities today is that they are not designed to handle world-class brains. These people, although belonging to one class, are highly individualised. No institution which cannot handle diversity of an intense kind, and which does not allow freedom, will be able to retain these people. Number one in Pakistan is almost as good or as bad as number 20.

So far, we have not been able to establish a list of recognised degree-awarding institutions. But we have rolled out university rankings.

Tayyab Rashid