HIGHER EDUCATION IN OIC
MEMBER STATES : SOME IMPERATIVES
Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, FRS
Coordinator General COMSTECH
It is heartening to observe that some OIC member countries have at last begun to focus on the need for development of higher education. The most significant progress has been made in recent years by Turkey and Iran. This is reflected in the increase in the number of international publications from these countries. More recently Qatar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have decided to establish some world-class higher education institutions and have announced significant investments. However I must add a word of caution here: they must not fall into trap of creating beautiful and expensive campuses, full of electronic gadgetry, thereby creating an illusion of having world-class institutions. High quality universities are not about beautiful buildings but about beautiful minds! Universities in this day and age are judged and ranked by the quality of their creative output. This is reflected through:
a) The quality and number of research publications in reputable international journals;
b) the impact factors of those research journals;
c) citations by other authors of the work of academics published from these universities;
d) the Ph.D. output of the universities;
e) the grants won at international level by faculty members of the universities;
f) the international honours and awards won by the faculty members for their academic contributions and;
g) the number of international patents resulting from researches carried out in the universities, particularly if they result in commercialization.
What the OIC countries need to do, if they truly wish to develop world-class higher education institutions, is to:
1) Identify the brightest young minds and send them for Masters/Ph.D. level studies to the top 100 universities in the world in areas of national need.
2) Attract this brightest trained manpower back, on completion of their training, to their respective countries through creating an enabling environment in the form of excellent research facilities, access to international journals through digital libraries, availability of liberal research grants and level of salaries which are significantly better than what they can get in USA/Europe and other technologically advanced countries.
The faculty members in such universities must be given only temporary contract appointments for periods of at least 6-8 years, and they should be given permanency at particular academic positions only if their creativity (in the form of research productivity of high quality research articles and Ph.D. output) has been independently judged by an external panel of world experts in technologically advanced countries. Those not found up to the mark should be removed from service to ensure excellence, since mediocrity only breeds more mediocrity.
The universities should have a student-to-Ph.D. level manpower ratio of 10:1. Thus a university having 10,000 students should have at least 1000 high quality Ph.D. level faculty members. Moreover 20% of the students (at least 2000 students in a company of 10,000) should be registered for Ph.D. level degrees so that there is an annual output of about 400 Ph.Ds. per year. Such Ph.D. degrees must only be given after the theses have been approved by at least two Professorial level experts in technologically advanced countries (even if expertise for low evaluation exists) to ensure neutrality. A good model to look at is the Tsinghua University in Beijing which has about 30,000 students and has an output of over 1000 Ph.Ds per year(!). Cambridge University, which is over 600 years old, has alone produced 67 Nobel Prize winners so far. MIT has spawned 4000 companies which have annual sales of over US$ 235 billion. Stanford University contributed to the emergence of the Silicon Valley around it which has made revolutionary developments in computer science and information technology.
All these models rely on one key factor for their success – internationally eminent highly creative individuals. Highly paid appointments for 1-2 years of foreign professors from the West is not the answer as they lack the motivation, passion and commitment to make a change - they usually view the assignments in the oil rich states as a “lucky paid break” from their normal intense activities – a period in which they can earn good money and relax. There is no dearth of young talent within OIC member states. The challenge is to excite them to opt for careers in academia and research and provide them with opportunities of enjoying the fun associated with cutting-edge research.
In summary, we must build genuine world-class Centres of Excellence and not waste our money in creating beautiful but empty palatial institutions that we see so often in the oil rich OIC member states. These have benefited no one except the foreign construction companies who have looted and plundered at will over the past 40 years.