On the semester system in Pakistani universities
PROBABLY all of the universities in Pakistan have adapted the semester system instead of the traditional annual system of education.
The replacement of the annual system with the semester system has brought a number of pleasant changes.
Now the students don’t need to wait for years for their results and the students have to be engaged all the year with their studies.
However, beside its positive features, there are several very dangerous features of the semester system which destroy the gains of this regularity.
One of the most remarkable features of the newly introduced system is decentralization and de-standardization of curriculum and examination systems.
In the annual system, there was a fixed outline for every course which the teacher was responsible to teach.
The paper was to be compiled by a third person and to be evaluated by a fourth person. In many cases, the pattern of the paper was also pre-decided.
Therefore, it was necessary for the teacher to cover the prescribed outline to the maximum if not completely.
Most often, it was not possible for the teachers and/or students to influence the paper setter/evaluator.
Therefore, it was possible to judge the competencies of a student, knowing the names of courses that he/she had studied because the outlines were well known.
In the newly introduced semester system, the universities either don’t have any well designed outlines, or if they have, they don’t bother to have any check and balance on observing these outlines.
Practically, the teacher is absolutely free to choose the course outline and textbooks. He is free to teach whatever he wants. Therefore, nobody knows what the student has studied by knowing the name of course on his detailed marks certificate. The consequences of this non-standardization have started to appear.
If a student had studied four courses with similar titles in his degree program, the coverage of all these courses would be the same.
For example, suppose a student has studied three courses entitled Mathematics I, Mathematics II and Advanced Mathematics during his/her degree program.
The difference in the three courses would only be that of the temper and teaching style of the three teachers.
During an interview for M.Phil., I came across two students, with the first student declaring that he has studied four courses in statistics, and the second student declaring to have studied only one course in statistics.
There was absolutely no difference in the limit of contents that the two students declared to have studied.
This overlapping happens systematically. Take the example of courses of mathematics. The teacher of Mathematics I is free to cover only 10% of the prescribed outlines and there is no check and balance in the system to keep track of coverage of the outlines.
When a student with this reading goes to the next level, the teacher of Mathematics II would think that the students don’t have grip on the contents of Mathematics I, and so, he would repeat Mathematics I for the sake of improvement in the background knowledge of the students. Therefore, he would drop the outlines of Mathematics II.
Now, when it comes to the teacher of Advanced Mathematics, it would not be possible for him to cover the prescribed outline for his course because the students don’t have sufficient background. Therefore, the students will end up with the knowledge of only the first course.
In the annual system, the paper was to be prepared by a third person, probably having no relationship with the teacher of the course.
The paper setter would make the paper only on the basis of the prescribed outline. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the teacher to teach the outlines prescribed for his own course.
So, the coverage of the prescribed outlines was unavoidable. It was necessary for the students to have sufficient knowledge of the course and was impossible for a student to pass a course without having a minimum knowledge.
In the two years B.Sc. degree program, the Calculus by SM Yousaf was to be followed by most of the universities as a textbook of Mathematics. The book had a good coverage of differentiation, integration and differential equations etc.
Without having a reasonable grip on the book, it was not possible for students to pass this single course of mathematics, and therefore the graduates would have good knowledge of integration and differentiation.
Now you can find many students holding a BS Mathematics degree, which is equivalent to M.Sc. of the old annual system, without sufficient knowledge of basic calculus.
You can find many students having BS mathematics who are unable to solve any three chapters of the calculus by SM Yousaf.
Once I had to teach Mathematics to the students of BA Usul-ud-Din at International Islamic University. The official outlines of the course were somewhat similar to F.Sc. level mathematics.
In the BA Usul-ud-Din program many students come from Madrassa background, not having primary level skills in Mathematics.
So, it was impossible to teach them the prescribed outlines, and I taught my self-designed outlines with quite strange coverage. The students went through the exam with several securing A-grade. But this A grade carries no meaning. No one can judge the level of competency of the students on the basis of this course and this grade.
If there was a standardized outline and a third party examination system, it wouldn’t be possible to deviate from the prescribed outlines. So, the Mathematics in the transcript of the student would have some meanings.
The students would not be able to get written Mathematics in their transcript until they attain a certain level of competency in Mathematics.
In this strange environment, if a teacher wants to be loyal to prescribed outlines, his survival in the education industry becomes doubtful.
In the next semester, neither the student would want to study from such a strict teacher, nor will the program coordinators assign any course to a teacher having such a bad result record.
Therefore teachers are systematically forced to create as much convenience as they can, at the cost of quality of education.
As a result, the course titles written on the transcript become meaningless and would have no indication of the level of competency of the graduate. I am afraid that after a few years we would have lots of people carrying M.Phil. and MS degrees but having no capability to teach to secondary school level.
I have no hesitation in admitting that reversal of the annual system is neither possible nor feasible, however, in order to save higher education from a complete collapse, we must introduce some checks and balances, centralization and standardization.
—The writer is Director, Kashmir Institute of Economics, Azad Jammu and Kashmir University.
