Despite the announcement to offer the courses in the Department of Development Studies at Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), the management of the institution is fleecing its students by providing them studies of Development Economic courses violating their own promises and deceiving the students, Pakistan Today has learnt. Not only the students enrolled for the current semester have filed complaints against the attitude of the PIDE management but even an official of the institution has wrote to President Asif Ali Zardari, PIDE Chancellor Dr Nadeem-ul-Haque as well as Higher Education Commission (HEC) Executive Director Dr Sohail Naqvi about the negative practice at the PIDE – one of the leading research organisations devoted to theoretical and empirical research in Development Economics in general and on Pakistan-related economic issues in particular.
Sources inside PIDE told this scribe that the institution was granted the degree-awarding status in November 2006 to impart quality education with outstanding scholars (including Nobel laureates) in the fields of Economics, Demography and Anthropology as members of its Advisory Board but the indifferent attitude of PIDE Vice-chancellor (VC) Dr Rashid Amjad, who spend most of his time in Geneva (Switzerland) and Lahore, PIDE status as one of the top research institute has received a massive setback.
Talking to this scribe, a number of students from different departments said gone are the days when the PIDE was known as ‘The Centre of Excellence’ as students prefer to enrol in other Institutions. “In previous few years, 30 to 34 students were enrolled in its five departments including Economics, Business Studies, Econometrics and Statistics, Population Sciences, and Environmental Economics, but now the enrolment has gone down drastically over the recent years.” “The website www.pide.org.pk vividly shows Development Studies Department (DSD) offering courses to MPhil students, but practically, it is not working according to its full-fledged status,” said a student, who enrolled for DSD, adding that the link had neither been removed nor the said courses were being studied.
Students maintained that they had registered their complaints but they did not receive any reply from the concerned authorities. “The VC in reply to the complaints repeatedly asked to carry on the study and promised to offer these courses in next semester,” said a student. “I’ve enrolled in the Development Studies Department, where a total of 27 students were selected, but are forcibly taught Economics instead of Development Studies courses,” another student of DSD said. A PIDE official on condition of anonymity said, “Dr Soofia Mumtaz, chief of Research and section head in Applied Socio-Cultural Process, was assigned a task to formulate course outline for Development Studies Department for the first time in the Fall Semester 2011. When she diligently formulated the courses for cross-fertilisation of knowledge in consultation with the Sussex University, the VC not only hijacked her work but also refused to offer those programmes to the students enrolled in those courses, and instead they were forced to study Development Economics.”
The official also revealed that one semester comprised 16 weeks but the VC ordered to cover the courses within four weeks and that too with the help of teaching assistants and not the qualified faculty members. Some faculty members repeatedly asked the VC to provide the students the same courses that were written on the website and stop this deception but to no avail, the official said. Unlike the past, there is no quality publications prepared by the PIDE and the quality researchers have already quit the organization. The official also alleged that the VC did not allow genuine persons to take on board to streamline the academics of PIDE because of his vested interests. When contacted, Dr Soofia Mumtaz confirmed that she had written an application to President Zardari, PIDE Chancellor Dr Nadeem-ul-Haque and HEC Executive Director Dr Sohail Naqvi, seeking their urgent intervention in addressing the farce being carried out at PIDE at the expense of the students.
“They are being taught Economics under the garb of Development Studies. This is not only unethical, but I believe it is also academically illegal. I know of no similar act of deliberate deception at the institute during my almost 25 years of service. It not only calls into question the reputation of the institute, but also the quality of education being imparted,” she wrote in the application. “In response to the need to promote multidisciplinary knowledge and introduce a more holistic perspective in the development discourse to meet relevant policy objectives, I floated the idea of a programme in Development Studies back in January 2010. I gave Rashid Amjad a written proposal in July 2010, and have since spent much of my time in developing the programme in consultation with social scientists within the country, as well as at universities in the UK and France, of which the VC was kept informed at every stage. I had undertaken the whole exercise from the way the programme was to be conceived, its contents and parameters, identification of courses, gaining faculty consent and discussing course outlines with them, including the write up for the PIDE brochure and on the PIDE web site (www.pide.org.pk). Even the brochure was designed by me, as was the entry test,” she said.
Most importantly, Soofia claimed that the students, who had applied for a multidisciplinary programme on the basis of the universally accepted definition of Development Studies and the information she had accordingly put on the PIDE website, were also confused and frustrated since they had come from all over the country in hope of quality education that promised them multiple career options. When contacted, HEC Executive Director Dr Naqvi said he had received the letter from Dr Soofia. “The VC is the authority of university who takes initiative for the welfare and improvement of academics, where the HEC has a minimal role to interfere. I have consulted Dr Rashid Amjad on this particular matter but it ‘seems’ the clash between VC and Dr. Mumtaz is personal,” Naqvi said. However, Naqvi refused to comment what he had discussed with the VC to get the matter solved. “Hopefully, the matter would be resolved in few weeks,” he said, adding that the HEC had nothing in their hands to interfere in this particular issue. This scribe tried to contact Dr Rashid Amjad for his version, but he was neither available in his office nor received the phone call. When asked, PIDE Chancellor Dr Nadeem-ul-Haque, who is also the deputy chairman planning commission, for his comments also refused to comment on the issue.