Can someone believe that dozens of Universities in Pakistan are running on Ad hoc basis without their permanent staff? Yes, almost half of the universities in Pakistan are without their permanent Vice Chancellor, Registrar, Treasurer, Controller of Examinations etc. Most of the universities have granted additional charges for the positions like Deans, Directors and Chairpersons. The trend to hire the visiting faculty is more common instead of hiring permanent faculty. The ratio of hiring the lower staff on daily wage basis seems higher than of the regular staff. You would observe lack of permanent members in the statutory bodies like Board of Studies, Board of Faculties, Finance & Planning Committee, Syndicate, Senate etc. The University Senate use to meet at once /twice, the Syndicate once in each quarter of the year and the Academic Council use to meet at once in six months in every year. Perhaps, there are some universities who follow the calendars of their event as mentioned above with letter and spirit.
The KPK Act of the universities is clearly making directions that no member of the teaching faculty shall be assigned the duties of the Registrar, Controller of Examinations and Treasurer on acting or dual charge basis beyond the period of three months. But we can observe the gross violation of the said sections of the mentioned Act from the university authorities. Same is the case in all other provinces to assign the duties of principal officers on additional charge basis. Let me quote the examples of my own universities (where I served/serving) like Ghazi University, DGKhan, where almost 09 people have been assigned the duties of the Vice Chancellor in 09 years. But, no permanent Registrar, Controller of Examinations, Treasurer, Project Director, Deans, Directors etc. have been appointed since the establishment of the University i.e. 2014 till to date. University of Gujrat has been established in 2004 and still without permanent/ whole time Registrar, Treasurer etc. Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, RYK still lacking of their Registrar, Treasurer, Controller of Examinations, Deans etc. It is surprising to mention that the syndicate of Ghazi University met 9th time since its establishment, but the Chairperson of the Syndicate (The Minister HED) attended only once and Vice Chancellor had been asked to chair the meeting on behalf of the honourable Minister. I have usually observed presence of the nominees of Secretaries of administrative departments (HED, Law, Finance etc.) in the meeting of the statutory bodies of the universities. Same is the case with almost all universities in Pakistan.
In my opinion, the above-mentioned seen & scenario depicts that the leadership and management of tertiary institutions in Pakistan has desirous to dive into adhocracy culture which is parallel to traditional hierarchy culture, having “COLD WAR” against the last one. In Adhocracy culture, decisions are taken quickly and things change often depending on current needs. There can be less emphasis on hierarchy, planning ahead, or formal procedures with limited job specialization that means that everyone has to know multiple things and they’re encouraged to have a variety of activities and functions. Apple, Amazon, Google, Tesla are renowned for their adhocracy culture. The historical and statistical figures proves that universities leadership remains eager to have power and people according to their own mind-set. As we have experienced the traditional hierarchy culture in the universities, we should once give them the freedom to practice the adhocracy culture with full freedom to reach at any conclusion that would also be a lesson for next generation by accepting the saying of John Maynard Keynes who says that the difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones. We can either establish or declare an institution as a model university on adhocracy culture with full freedom to the Authorities and Officers of the university to show the results. The more details of the above-mentioned idea is available and can be discussed and shared with the concerned authorities as Abdul Kalam says, “Don’t read success stories, you will only get a message. Read failure stories, you will get some ideas to get success.”
The author is a professor of Islamic Studies at Ghazi University, Dera Ghazi Khan
