Dawn, May 7, 2006
Treating academics with respect
By Dr Muhammad Ishaq
THE Quaid-i-Azam University was once rich in terms of having highly qualified faculty on its payroll, but nowadays, it is fighting for its survival. In the past 10 years, several of its distinguished professors have retired or left the university; some even preferred to go without pension. On the other hand, among fresh inductees, only few have had foreign exposure.
With the ever-increasing financial pressures, members of the QAU have to look around for various other ways to earn extra money in addition to the (basic pay scale) salary that they get from their teaching. In the recent past, the university has devised several means to facilitate its teachers to earn extra income.
About seven years ago, the university started a second shift in its M.Sc. programme in the evening under the self-finance scheme. This was partially in compliance with the government’s demand to increase the number of students but the primary impetus seemed to be to meet its rising expenditures. The faculty and staff agreed on this arrangement because it allowed them to make some extra money.
The honorarium fixed for per hour teaching was just to keep a balance between the earning from the self-finance scheme and spending under different heads. However, the fact is that the amount being paid to faculty members to teach a one-hour class in QAU is lower than that offered by private sector institutions. Many faculty members, offered the opportunity, have gone on to teach outside the university to take advantage of this pay differential. This involves teaching undergraduate classes in private sector institutions or engaging as consultants for the private sector.
The university also started paying extra renumeration to those teachers who supervise an M.Sc. project or an M.Phil/Ph.D. thesis. An amount of five thousand rupees per student is paid as monthly honorarium to a teacher who is supervising a research student under the Higher Education Commission’s indigenous scholarship scheme.
But all these methods are not proving very effective or even sufficient to halt the brain drain. In recent years, many teachers resigned from QAU well before their retirement in search of jobs elsewhere. Some of them went abroad while others joined local private institutions like LUMS, NUST at a salary packages between two and four times higher than what they were getting at QAU.
Those who are at QAU but are also teaching at other institutions do not have it easy either. For one, this extra income comes in piecemeal form and at the expense of their academic efficiency. Their attention is divided and they carry out different teaching assignments, many of which have no relation to one another. The quest to make some extra income also leads to unethical practices. Some teachers come to campus just to deliver a lecture and immediately depart after that. Such teachers do not set aside, as they should, any spare time for their students — which is a requirement of teachers in a semester system. Besides, those who teach in non-QAU institutions do not inform the university administration.
Another example of unethical behavior can be found with regard to flagrant violation of university rules regarding accommodation on campus. The university’s accommodation is limited and a newly-hired faculty member has to wait for about twelve years to get a house in the university colony. According to the university rules, a person is not entitled to a house in the campus colony if he/she or his/her spouse or dependent has a livable house in Islamabad or Rawalpindi. But there are some who live in the university colony whom many believe have such houses in either city. It could also be that in such cases the person who lives in the campus colony may well be renting out his/her house in the city. The QAU administration needs to stamp out such practices because it deprives those who actually need housing of their due right.
Recently, the tenure track system (TTS) has been introduced at the QAU and several faculty members have accepted it. It pays higher salaries but awards the recipient on productivity and holds him more accountable. This system offers the hope that at least those who can meet its stringent standards will be able to have an financially safe future and will not have to resort to unethical ways to make a decent living as academics.
The final version of the TTS document as recommended by the QAU syndicate has been now lying for almost six months with the chancellor’s office for final approval. The waiting is getting longer and longer. If the TTS is not approved, it will be a massive setback as far as the QAU is concerned since many of its hardworking faculty members will then try out other options.
Having said that, the TTS is not meant for all teachers. Some will not be able to meet its minimum qualifying criteria. Those who will not be eligible will have to contend earning salaries on the government pay scales. It in reference to this situation that the HEC has issued a directive asking all universities to implement ‘new criteria for appointments in the BPS system’. The minimum requirements for promotion or new appointment at the post of associate professor or professor have been raised manifold but all this has been done without offering any compensating financial benefit. Many universities in the country have reacted strongly against the new criteria and the main argument is that they are unrealistic and unjustified.
The fact is that there are not many academics in the country who will qualify according to the TTS’s guidelines. Similarly, there aren’t all that many people living abroad who would be willing to
come back and teach. Hence, the concerns of those faculty members who may not qualify for tenure need to be addressed as well.
The HEC has also launched a foreign faculty hiring scheme offering very lucrative salaries to those who live abroad and are willing to come here and work for a period of a year or two. This is actually an indirect recognition of the fact that the brain drain will stop only if a decent salary package is offered to all university teachers.
Such a package needn’t be equal to that offered overseas but should be very competitive for the Pakistani context. As it currently stands, the foreign faculty hiring scheme seems only a short-term solution and has failed to have any significant impact on the academic environment in public sector universities. The HEC may have been expecting that the foreign faculty so hired will have a positive effect on the level and quality of research here. However, so far the presence of foreign faculty earning several times more than local faculty has only raised resentment among the latter.
The government needs to come up with a permanent solution to the brain drain problem. Some suggestions that may be worth considering in this regard are as follows:
* A competitive and integrated salary package must be offered to university teachers. The salary of a university teacher should be such that young people should want to join the teaching profession.
* The TTS should be implemented in the QAU without any further delay. All those who qualify according to the criteria should be given tenure. Those who can get TTS in the near future should be encouraged to prepare themselves for it. Various incentives like research grants should be offered to them to improve their productivity.
* The non-PhD faculty should be offered scholarships for higher studies by the university itself.
* The non-TTS faculty should be given salaries based on special pay scales like those in several organizations like the KRL, NESCOM and PAEC.
* An M.Sc. graduate should be hired in grade 17, an M.Phil. degree in grade 18 and a Ph.D. degree holder is grade 19. This will help make the teaching and research profession more attractive than it currently is.
* An adequate number of houses should be built on campus so that whoever is interested can get a reasonable accommodation.
* Certain schemes should be announced to engage people for a long-term stay on campus. For example, a person would be entitled to a plot in the campus colony if he/she serves the university for a certain period, say 10 years. Or an interested person should be offered a loan on easy term to build a house or to fulfill any other financial obligation.
The bottom-line is that since the universities are the only source of highly qualified manpower, the education sector must be given the top priority. Academics should be recognized, respected and properly rewarded.
The writer is assistant professor at the Quaid-i-Azam University and president of its academic staff association. Email: mishaq@qau.edu.pk
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