Pakistans “Intellectual Rubble: Learning the Hard Way”

“Newsweek”:http://www.newsweek.com/ this week reports that while American universities have become models of sucess, universities and colleges in the rest of the world are fast failing. The problems range from too many students – lack of space in a Roman college had classes being held in tents, garages, and porn theaters (and they say do as the Romans do!) – to too few students and facilities.

Pakistan has it’s own special problems, the article notes:

bq. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a noted professor of nuclear physics at Quaid-I-Azam University in Islamabad, visits a top American university for several months every year – most recently Stanford and MIT – to do research. He?s even more outraged than before about the sorry state of his country’s universities, which he describes as “intellectual rubble.” That may sound harsh, but few Pakistani academics would disagree. The problems are many: a dearth of qualified faculty, students ill-prepared by a dismal public-education system, an often incompetent university bureaucracy and blatant government intervention. “On campuses, serious discussion of scientific, philosophic, social or political issues is virtually nonexistent,” he says. “It is difficult to imagine a system in the modern world which had a greater antipathy to intellectual inquiry than the one which presently exists in Pakistan.”

» “Learning the Hard Way”:http://www.msnbc.com/news/962984.asp?cp1=1 Newsweek International Sept. 15 issue.

Read more at the Textile Institute of Pakistan’s newsletter: “*Quack*”:http://quack.offroadpakistan.com/opinion/pakistans_intellectual_rubble_learning_the_hard_way.html

*Update:* Related articles on this at “Chowk”:http://www.chowk.com/:

* “LUMS — Lahore University of mis-Management Sciences”:http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00002552&channel=university%20ave&start=0&end=9&page=1&chapter=1

* “The New Generation of Pakistani Architects”:http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00002528&channel=gulberg

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