Save University of Karachi: The Plea of a Karachite

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Karachi (UoK) recent­ly pro­posed a new admis­sion pol­i­cy with high­light­ed fea­ture of abol­ish­ment of its K cat­e­go­ry. K which hap­pens to be acronym for Karachi was a spe­cial priv­i­lege pro­vid­ed to the stu­dents of Karachi enabling them to com­pete in a relax envi­ron­ment and achieve excel­lence.

Locat­ed on uni­ver­si­ty road, the main cam­pus of UoK hap­pens to facil­i­tate around 24,000 in-house stu­dents. Being the pre­miere insti­tu­tion of the metrop­o­lis, UoK wel­comes stu­dents from all over Pak­istan. The cam­pus has rep­re­sen­ta­tion of every eth­nic and reli­gious youth group high­light­ing its open­ness.

How­ev­er the alma mater to mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als has recent­ly found itself entan­gled in all sorts of con­tro­ver­sies. It has become a place where call offs and protests hap­pen to be a reg­u­lar hap­pen­ing. In some recent inci­dents, aca­d­e­m­ic staff has also been found involved. The lat­est took place in June and spanned for almost a week, with com­plete sus­pen­sion of aca­d­e­m­ic activ­i­ties. The ori­gin of this teach­ing staff agi­ta­tion is the con­tro­ver­sial Sindh Uni­ver­si­ty Act 2013; the act which pass­es con­trol of provin­cial edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions from gov­er­nor to chief min­is­ters. It also paves the way for exces­sive involve­ment of provin­cial gov­ern­ment in uni­ver­si­ty affairs, an act only done in Pak­istan.

The Vice Chan­cel­lor remains adamant that recent pol­i­cy is a sole in-house ini­tia­tive (itself a vio­la­tion of Act’s arti­cle 6‑A). One can eas­i­ly attribute this devel­op­ment to the grow­ing polit­i­cal influ­ence. Why is it so that UoK is becom­ing hos­tile to its own back­yard stu­dents? Blame the author for being racial­ly moti­vat­ed but counter argu­ments lose sub­stance and only bow down to the fact that the bill remains a con­spir­a­cy.

The province of Sindh as per offi­cial provin­cial gov­ern­ment web­site has a pop­u­la­tion of slight­ly more than 30 mil­lion. Karachi the cap­i­tal is esti­mat­ed to host around 20 mil­lion, the two third share of the whole pop­u­la­tion. There hap­pen to be a total of 13 provin­cial uni­ver­si­ties; of which 4 are in Karachi. Bas­ing the argu­ment on pop­u­la­tion map­ping, Karachi which deals with a load of 150,000 inter­me­di­ate stu­dents year­ly is only one of the 5 boards in Sindh. Hyder­abad, Larkana, Sukkur and Mir­pur Khas hap­pen to be the oth­er sim­i­lar bod­ies. So how is it to be believed that a Karachi stu­dent who is already deprived from one of its basic rights of equal oppor­tu­ni­ty (as per ratio 8 uni­ver­si­ties should be housed in metrop­o­lis) is the one blamed of deriv­ing extra ben­e­fit and enjoy­ing cov­er of quo­ta sys­tem. Shouldn’t a Kara­chite being aggriev­ed par­ty be sup­port­ed by its local insti­tu­tions with an addi­tion­al strong quo­ta in oth­er provin­cial uni­ver­si­ties? The norm across globe, where local stu­dents are encour­aged by their local uni­ver­si­ties, is some­thing a Kara­chite already lacks and is now being com­plete­ly denied off.

Karachi which not only caters to its domes­tic sup­ply but has also to accom­mo­date both intra and inter-provin­cial load should now be eased off giv­en its own grow­ing demands. The bur­den only com­pels a Kara­chite to turn towards pri­vate uni­ver­si­ties which are cost­ly and at times blamed for their envi­ron­ment.

The con­spir­ing nature of the inju­ri­ous Act also frus­trates stu­dents of the city. As per Sindh Uni­ver­si­ty Act 2013, only 3 provin­cial insti­tu­tions have been deprived of their pow­er of devis­ing their own admis­sion pol­i­cy; Uni­ver­si­ty of Karachi, Dow Uni­ver­si­ty of Health Sci­ences and NED Uni­ver­si­ty of Engi­neer­ing & Tech­nol­o­gy. Their admis­sion mod­ule would now be dic­tat­ed by the gov­ern­ment where remain­ing provin­cial insti­tu­tions are free to do so as accord­ing to their wish.

Uni­ver­si­ties across globe func­tion inde­pen­dent­ly and are no where seen to be dic­tat­ed or inter­vened by pol­i­tics. This strength­ens the aca­d­e­mics, and leads to a pro­duc­tive envi­ron­ment which is free of pol­i­tics and dis­crim­i­na­tion. Karachi Uni­ver­si­ty has its own supreme body; the syn­di­cate which can do the required job but unfor­tu­nate­ly finds itself par­a­lyzed after pro­mul­ga­tion of the Act. Uni­ver­si­ties are sup­posed to be a place where indi­vid­u­als should dwell in schol­ar­ly works; inven­tions should be the order of the day whose ben­e­fits a soci­ety should reap. We how­ev­er find ours doing none to the nor­mal course. State is not sup­posed to con­trol every affair. Argu­ment that indi­vid­u­als should learn pol­i­tics in these noble places also hap­pens to be unique as is car­ried nowhere around. Have uni­ver­si­ties such as Cam­bridge, MIT and Har­vard grown in this fash­ion.

Uni­ver­si­ties hap­pen to be a student’s last stop or gate­way to prac­ti­cal life and lessons learnt are life­time expe­ri­ences and may com­plete­ly change one’s course of life and/or ide­ol­o­gy. A UoK grad­u­ate who already suf­fers from a hos­tile envi­ron­ment, liv­ing in a facil­i­ty which looks lit­tle bet­ter than a prison with barbed wires and bar­ri­cades at entrances and para­mil­i­tary forces roam­ing, demands a bit bet­ter. If we are to make him believe that he can­not enjoy a quo­ta but will have him placed in some col­lec­tive cat­e­go­ry only brings him a sense of sat­is­fac­tion. A sane mind and enlight­ened think­ing should com­plete­ly reject quote sys­tem and sup­port mer­i­toc­ra­cy. For Karachi stu­dents this remains par­tial­ly true. Deprived of their quo­ta now in their home they are sup­posed to fol­low the quo­ta sys­tem else­where in prac­ti­cal and social life. Shouldn’t the case be of col­lec­tive suprema­cy of mer­i­toc­ra­cy be it what­ev­er aspect of growth?

What we might breed would be indi­vid­u­als who are already least com­pet­i­tive and shall car­ry stig­ma of being reject­ed and deprived. Stu­dents of Karachi Uni­ver­si­ty are always look­ing for that sav­ior which can sup­port them or favor them rather stand­ing up to prove them­selves on per­son­al skills. If this remains the case UoK would soon become an insti­tu­tion of con­ve­nience, and fact of the mat­ter is con­ve­nience is not a sub­sti­tute of intel­lect.

For the plight of Karachi stu­dents sup­port them or let them com­pete. For the sake of this noble insti­tu­tion called Uni­ver­si­ty of Karachi, free it from polit­i­cal pres­sures, let it breathe, or kill it in one strike rather this painful slow death.