Our Obsolete Education System – A Personal Experience at the University of Karachi

With­in our soci­ety, young­sters start to work very ear­ly with­out know­ing how to define their career path. Edu­ca­tion does not pro­vide ori­en­ta­tion to young aspir­ing pro­fes­sion­als but empha­sizes the idea that the pri­ma­ry goal is a degree with which they can apply for a decent job in order to earn mon­ey for the every­day spend­ing. This obso­lete sys­tem hasn’t changed since decades, still offer­ing old syl­labi to stu­dents in pub­lic schools and col­leges. As far as the com­mon man is con­cerned the qual­i­ty of edu­ca­tion seems to be the least impor­tant point. How­ev­er, even the so called front run­ners in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem do not chal­lenge or try to change it over time – A fact that results in a poor edu­ca­tion­al frame­work which is only empha­siz­ing recita­tion in order to pass the exams and get a degree.

Per­son­al­ly, I’m one of those young­sters described above who start­ed to work very ear­ly in life and thus couldn’t com­plete their mas­ter stud­ies. After the years passed by and I acquired a senior posi­tion in a local orga­ni­za­tion, I delib­er­at­ed about whether I should enroll myself at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Karachi with­in the Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion Depart­ment for a Mas­ters of HRM. My objec­tive behind it was to gain greater knowl­edge about my work­ing field, learn new tools and tech­niques of HRM and at last get a degree as well.

So final­ly my class­es start­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2013. Being the only one with more than 15 years of work­ing expe­ri­ence in my class, I real­ized that the teach­ers didn’t pro­vide any­thing use­ful for today’s mar­ket demand and only repeat­ed what had been taught in the past years. They weren’t ready to change because of their lack of expo­sure to prac­ti­cal life while I was aware of the demands of the cor­po­rate world.

Old books and obso­lete the­o­ries were the epit­o­me of their teach­ing. Par­tic­u­lar­ly the class par­tic­i­pa­tion was held at a bare min­i­mum and instead teach­ers deliv­ered their whole lec­tures with­out any break, not inter­act­ing or moti­vat­ing the stu­dents to par­tic­i­pate. The gen­er­al per­cep­tion of the stu­dents was sim­i­lar: they just want­ed to get the atten­dance in the class­es in order to pass and achieve the next semes­ter. More­over, most of the teach­ers were mem­bers of the per­ma­nent fac­ul­ty and thus didn’t even both­er to give class­es reg­u­lar­ly. Instead of class­es the stu­dents had time to wan­der around the cam­pus, sit at a tea shop or dri­ve the long way back home.

So while I was study­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Karachi I didn’t get to know the expe­ri­enced and qual­i­fied fac­ul­ty peo­ple were talk­ing about. Instead I was dis­ap­point­ed by the casu­al teach­ing style, the reg­u­lar absence of the teach­ers, the lack­lus­ter admin­is­tra­tion of the depart­ment and the class rooms. But espe­cial­ly the utter­ly pathet­ic and obso­lete edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem that only required the stu­dents to recite, pass and get the degree with­out the acqui­si­tion of new skills or cor­po­rate norms frus­trat­ed me the most. There­fore, I decid­ed to leave the Uni­ver­si­ty of Karachi because my aim was not only to get a degree but to learn.

With all respect, teach­ers like Dr. Abuzar Waji­di, Dr. Shabib, Dr. Balouch and oth­ers are not ful­fill­ing the mod­ern edu­ca­tion­al stan­dards which should pre­pare and enable young pro­fes­sion­als for the real and cru­el chal­lenges of the cor­po­rate world. I’m aware of the fact that cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions exist when it comes to gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions but nev­er­the­less it should not pre­vent teach­ers and the men­tioned indi­vid­u­als to impart qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion based on the demands of the cur­rent job mar­ket. I’m of the opin­ion that these edu­cat­ed peo­ple should final­ly real­ize the time they are liv­ing in and learn new teach­ing tech­niques and tools to train young pro­fes­sion­als so they can become the lead­ers of tomor­row.