Centre for Public Policy & Governance,
FC College (A Chartered University), Lahore
Supervisor: Dr. Saeed Shafqat
Lead Researcher: Raheem ul Haque
Research Associate: Khurram Waqas Malik
Research Assistants: Adeel Riaz & Saboor Karamat
Scope of Work:
1. To prepare a comprehensive report on the credentials/Curriculum Vitae (CSV’s) of the faculty currently teaching courses in governance related disciplines in Pakistani universities and public training institutions to assess the potential and training requirements for adopting a Masters’ program in Governance. More importantly faculty qualification, experience, area concentration and research orientation will be assessed both to develop clear targets for capacity development as well as to define a road map for achieving these targets in comparison to world class programs offering multi-disciplinary Governance curriculum.
2. The evaluation will also include institutional infrastructure including library, faculty and student facilities to determine student induction and professional development capacity.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
History & Evolution
The history of policy programs in Pakistan goes back to the early 1960s when the Institute of Administrative Studies, Punjab University started a program in Public Administration (PA). Simultaneously, leading to the establishment of Pakistan Administrative Staff College and National Institutes of Public Administration for the training of public servants. Public Administration programs have since started at a number public universities but it is only recent that universities have started Public Policy and Governance programs.
Unlike the evolution of policy programs in the United States where school standards were maintained owing to policy school associations, no such association exists in Pakistan although recently HEC has played a small part in reformulating curriculums. An evaluation of international policy schools indicates that though some commonalities exist in the curriculum, each school tends to specialize in a particular area of Public Policy owing to its faculty, location or institutional strength.
But in spite of the history of policy programs in Pakistan, there hasn’t been an academic discussion regarding the need, objective and adhering standards for the programs. It is thus important for academics to discuss and build a consensus on the definition of Governance, Public Policy and Public Administration, the standards for curriculum and graduation within the Pakistani context.
Academic Programs & Curriculum
Currently there are fifteen universities offering policy programs in the country divided into: First, Master’s programs requiring 14 years of education which include 9 MPA, and 1 Governance and Public Policy program each. Second, there are Master’s/MPhil programs requiring 16 years of education including 4 PA and 3 Public Policy of which 6 extend to a PhD program. Third, there are two degree awarding Executive Programs, 1 each in Public Administration and Public Policy.
In terms of curriculum, policy programs can be divided into three. First, the MPA programs which have evolved more towards management than policy with concentrations in Human Resource Management (HRM), Marketing, Finance and MIS with only a few schools offering Development. Second, Public Policy programs with heavy economic concentration producing economic analysis experts. Third, programs in Public Policy, Administration and Governance, which have a diverse curriculum and an eye for producing generalists.
Faculty & Institutional Status
Similarly diversity exists among policy programs in terms of institutional culture, faculty expertise and student intake. But the overall situation requires a lot of improvement as average Student to Full Time Faculty Ratio is 30 reaching as high as 75 for one university. The general dearth of full time faculty is further compounded when relevant subject areas are taken into account. The faculty expertise is heavily tilted towards HRM with a total of 7 PhDs while there is only 1 PhD for Quantitative/Econometric Analysis. Though our analysis indicates 17 Economic PhDs, this number would be 5 if PIDE, an economic research organization is excluded from the analysis. Thus there is a critical need for faculty expertise in Economic Theory and Quantitative & Empirical Analysis among policy schools. Within Public Management, HRM expertise dominates while Structure and Process of Government, and Leadership and Administrative Theory are neglected. But the worst situation exists in the field of Political Economy, Globalization, Governance and Development, all core areas of Public Policy for which faculty expertise is non-existent in policy schools.
The reasons for the dearth of full time and additionally PhD faculty are numerous including a young discipline, institutional culture, student intake but one that stands out for public sector universities is the compensation mechanism. The Tenure Track System (TTS) introduced by the HEC improves compensation structure for public sector faculty if conditions for research output are met. But almost all public sector faculty interviewed were not part of the TTS and it is unlikely that they would become a part primarily because they are currently teaching up to 6 courses a semester to supplement their government grade based income, leaving them little time for research.
Faculty Development
In terms of faculty development, some public sector universities are availing opportunities to send their junior faculty for PhD through HEC scholarship and foreign university exchange programs. But an institutional strategic plan is missing among all interviewed institutions. All institutions had goals to improve academic quality, introduce new concentrations or start a new program but a detailed plan which encapsulates faculty skills requirements, budgetary requirements, projected student size, administrative and institutional needs was missing.
It is thus recommended that policy programs in the country bring themselves under the framework of an association, which is manned by academic experts and policy makers to evolve a consensus on definitional grounds and objectives of the various policy programs. Additionally the same association can facilitate policy programs both to devise a five year strategic plan and more importantly to execute and achieve it.
Recommendations
Based on the interviews and data gathered over the course of this research, it is recommended that a three tiered approach be taken:-
- For the Short Term, policy programs should develop linkages with their own university’s social science departments to involve needed experts in teaching, while the association should kick start research activity by devising incentives for faculty research seminars. The association should create a pool of experts (both domestic and foreign faculty) to deliver intensive short-term courses in core policy subject areas at various cities in addition to exploring linkages and exchange program opportunities for domestic policy programs.
- For the Medium Term, the association should institutionalize the curriculum, program structure and logistics for short-term faculty training in select subject areas. Additionally association should facilitate foreign summer research sabbaticals where junior faculty can work under the supervision of an expert in the field while facilitating domestic PhD degree holders to get Post-Docs for exposure to foreign academic and research culture.
- For the Long Term, the association should institutionalize linkages and exchange programs with foreign universities for a long-term commitment towards faculty development and exchange; it should provide PhD scholarships in select subject areas for which experts do not exist in Pakistan. More importantly using its pool of experts, it should build a quality domestic PhD program by supporting it with faculty, library, lab and other institutional resources.
The following areas of exploration were further suggested during the review process but time constraints have restricted their inclusion in the report.
- A detailed assessment of Public Administration, Public Policy and Governance curriculums including texts of various universities would inform the scope, clarity, context (local or foreign) and datedness of what is being taught.
- An overview of market supply and demand of policy graduates should be undertaken to understand national level needs.
- The Annual Review Reports of policy departments can shed more light on the needs and functioning of these departments.
Posts
I find the assessment a positive first step with good general background information capturing the prevailing thoughts and concerns of the academia and their ideas on how to go ahead. Whether these ideas would really work or not, need some critical evaluation.
ReplyDeleteI think that we should treat this as version 1.0 and be willing to put it through a few iterations before we can develop a targeted approach to capacity development. The report itself could be used to take a few measures but whether these measures would be sufficient to address governance requirements needs to be evaluated.
The Report provides a good supply side summary i.e. listing institutions that are delivering or may have the capacity and interest to deliver the programs related to governance. It was very much the scope of the research. It would be useful to put an estimate to the possible number of graduates these institutions can produce i.e. quantify potential output for the next 5-10 years and then match it with the national demand.
Demand side estimate i.e. the need of such Masters’ degree holders in the society given the existing and projected population level & economic activity could be the next step. This study could also use other relevant indicators (health, education, crime etc) as well as carry out primary research to incorporate opinion and expectations of various sections of the society. Preferably, it should include benchmarks from the better governed economies. It is only after this exercise that we can determine the gap (or surplus!) between our capacity to produce these graduates and our requirements.
The difference between the existing capacity to produce such graduates and the desired levels in the society for acceptable governance would lead us to estimate training needs to fill the gap. This would be level-0 or the top level requirement assessment.
One very valuable contribution that GINI can make, in my opinion, is to make these estimates of demand and shortfall available to all universities so that they can initiate and plan programs to address specific needs. And these estimates could be further broken down into sub-categories (governance requirements in education, health, etc) and to various levels (incorporating the other two reports), we may able to trigger lots of independent program design exercises in the country.
Some other observations:
• While assessing ‘world class programs’, (page 8) it would useful to provide a list of these programs or at least of the universities.
• It seems from the opinion of various Pakistani academics (page 10-11) that they are more interested in debating policy rather than the practice of governance. There is very little applied focus and it would be interesting if we can make some specific comparisons with programs at foreign universities.
• Language is an important thing that has been highlighted and it may be worthwhile to explore the costs and processes to make governance literature available in Urdu.
• The part on institutional dynamics and compensation is very good. Similarly the note on linkages hits the nail spot on.
• While discussing Computer Labs, it may be worthwhile to analyze the over IT infrastructure requirements including but not limited to computer labs. It should include distance learning tools and learning management systems. It would be a bit questionable to recommend use of pirated copies since academic licenses are much cheaper and easily available.
• GINI could provide a word-processing centre where such reports may be checked for grammar and expression, proof-read and converted to a standardized format for easier reading.
In General, I find this baseline report to provide a lot of interesting and important information, but I will start by giving some concrete comments to specific pages:
ReplyDeletep. 4. Research Areas:
Here one refers to “the research exercise”. I think it would be better to stick to the term “Training Needs Assessment”.
I find the discussion of 1. Program Philosophy & Structure; 2. Infrastructure & Administration; and 3. Curriculum & Academic Experiences (p.5) to be very general. But it is, perhaps, useful?
p. 5 Faculty:
I find this variable to be concrete and good.
p.6 Second bullet-point:
The time of the sentence:
- The assessment of all foreign university programs will be based on …..
Or: Are they based on, or have they been based on….???
Similarly for:
i. A set of survey questionnaires will be used ….
ii. Focused interviews will be ….
(Here I would also delete the word “focused”, which is obvious).
iii. A focus group exercise will involve ….
p. 6 Research Report Structure:
Again, I think it would be better to stick to the term “Training Needs Assessment” than Research Report.
p. 7 Conceptual Framework
I appreciate that you introduce a couple of definitions of governance. I think that this is something that we will come back to, and that we will have good opportunities of elaborating and going more closely into as the GINI cooperation develops.
p. 8 Last paragraph:
This is the start of findings from assessing world class programs. This should be more explicitly indicated.
p. 9 I find the findings described in this page to be important and useful.
p. 10 Second paragraph:
Here one is starting on a discussion and analysis. This should be done more explicitly and elaborately.
Even though the discussion in this page is somewhat general, there are good attempts at trying to identify some central elements of good governance.
p. 12 Second paragraph:
The question of language, is I think, very important. This should perhaps be a more central subject?
The possibility of studying in one’s mother language is quite important.
p. 13 Table:
The Acronyms should be explained.
p. 14 Table:
The percentage at the bottom cell, second column should be deleted.
p. 15- p.18
The last paragraph and the Table at p. 16:
Qualifications of staff and the ratio of full time faculty, as well as qualifications of students. This is important information, and clearly illustrates the needs.
p. 17 gives a lot of information about vacancies; lack of qualified faculty to meet requirements; part-time positions; salary levels; lack of resources clearly indicate the importance of strengthening governance education.
continue from previous
ReplyDeletep. 17 last paragraph:
I wonder about the statement: “…. Someone who completed their PhD fifteen years ago in the same field can not teach the new macro economics.” It this is the case, one should ask why?
p. 19. 4th and last Paragraph:
The idea of stronger cooperation and linkages between the universities is very good, and much in compliance with the objectives of the GINI work.
p. 20 Other initiatives:
These kinds of initiatives are very important, and should be tried/introduced in more universities and training institutions.
The suggested recommendations are all positive and good, and could be supported and facilitated by GINI.
- Bullet-point 2. Journal of public policy: If there already are 20 plus credible social science journals in Pakistan, the GINI network should utilise the opportunity to improve or strengthen some of these in order to make them more relevant in terms of the GINI objectives.
- Bullet-point 3. Newsletter: GINI is already publishing a Newsletter. This can be developed to comprise policy related material that is relevant for, and can be distributed to, students,
p. 20 & p. 21 Institutional needs:
It is crucial that relevant, new and up-front books are available at the universities and institutions providing the training. And it is important that the library facilities and labs are strengthened and improved. The recommendation of establishing a shared library network is very good, and should be strongly supported by GINI.
The needs for expensive software for GIS systems, as well as SPSS, etc. are clearly indicated. GINI could perhaps help and facilitate the installation of this at more universities.
The Baseline Research on TNA of Masters’ level programs and courses by Centre for Public Policy and Governance (CPPG), FC College University, Lahore still talks about “Economic Theory and Quantitative & Empirical Analysis” though stating it is important for public policy, highlighting that we are still looking at Governance and Public Policy programs in terms of Economics. It does try to highlight about courses like Globalization, Political Economy or Politics of Policy Making completely missing from most of the Public Administration curriculums.
ReplyDeleteThis research also talks about faculty improvement, hiring of visiting faculty, opportunity for junior faculty to complete PhD, TTS (Tenure Track System) lack of research, infrastructure improvement access to resources both hard and online etc which are general issues and not related to Governance and Public Policy.
In my opinion this research does highlight what is needed for TNA for Masters’ level programs in Governance and Public Policy and also tries to give a Short, Medium and Long Term plans but not so conclusive as how these can be achieved. It does talk about 3-4 months short courses, establishing of a local think tank, and launching of a journal. Again these are all generic issues, may that be because it is a public university institute and unconsciously what problems it faces in general are highlighted more in their study rather than talking about the issue in hand.