By Dr Taimoor Ul Hassan
Higher education authorities’ policy of increasing the number of PhDs in the country to justify the massive funds they received for uplifting the research culture in universities was not a bad effort. It goes without saying that unless you can promote centers of research for knowledge creation with a profound impact on society, academic progress and overall transformation in academia is not possible.
Tenure Track System required the production of quality research papers. Research papers thus produced in huge numbers by both TTS and BPS faculty were aimed at getting promoted and securing an increase in salaries. Journals cropped up to publish these papers and assumed the function of what is best known as the publication mafia accommodating substandard papers with compromised peer review systems and selection committees
Conferences emerged and accompanied this farce of blooming research culture. That said It however goes to the credit of higher education authorities to set into motion a process that could have made a profound impact on social and scientific problems at the country level as well as international level if universities had taken it to its logical conclusion through foolproof scrutiny. This deficiency in implementing a well-intended policy also resulted in scandals of plagiarised publications.
Ironically public sector universities got huge funds and some of them got a place in international rankings. Private universities were left to support from their own resources their research endeavors. With lean infrastructure, they struggled to become research universities or at least touch the minimum standard set by the regulatory authorities. In all this farce, teaching suffered as faculty were burdened with producing doctoral theses and high-quality papers. An entire generation went through this rigor while feeling insecure about their jobs.
PhD is supposed to produce groundbreaking research with knowledge creation that could be put to use for actionable measures. As of now epistemologies and topics have been largely repetitive with slight modifications. New methodologies and topics relevant to scientific and social problems are being largely not applied.
The new twist by the regulatory authorities is the emphasis, not for the wrong reasons, on technology and innovations with insufficient infrastructure. Once promised research culture demanded matching research facilities’ resources and incentives. Technology and innovation have their own requirements yet it has started a rat race among public and private universities.
The article attached below talks about PhD predicament the world over. In Pakistan, things are even worse. There are teaching universities, research universities, social sciences and arts universities, technology universities, and comprehensive universities. All these universities have peculiar environments which are not present. The dream of enhancing research and technology can be claimed to have been materialized based on the statistical account. Is there a profound impact on society here and societies abroad where we send our research and technology projects presents a question that needs a serious self-appraisal and analysis.
Note:
Professor Dr Taimoor ul Hassan is the former Dean of the Faculty of Media and Mass Communication at the University of Central Punjab and Beaconhouse National University. He held senior editorial positions at English newspapers like Pakistan Times and Frontier Post. He has 100 research publications to his credit. His research areas cover strategic communication, cultural and international communication, development communication, psychological warfare, community networking, digital media, corporate communication, and new media technologies. This content was originally published on Facebook on July 10, 2024.
