ePoor

Higher Education Reform

The ePoor Response | The Program

Higher education has received increasing attention over the past decade as a critical component of the development of Southern countries. In particular, the UNESCO-World Bank report (2000) of the Task Force on Higher Education and Society: Peril and Promise (www.tfhe.net) brought out the importance of higher education for developing countries. In the emerging 'knowledge economy', nations that fail at creating a decent learning environment will lag behind, and may end up becoming virtual colonies of those that do succeed in this regard. According to Peril and Promise:

"The world economy is changing as knowledge supplants physical capital as the source of present (and future) wealth…. As knowledge becomes more important, so does higher education…. The quality of knowledge generated within higher education institutions, and its accessibility to the wider economy, is becoming increasingly critical to national competitiveness…. This poses a serious challenge to the developing world…. Quite simply, many developing countries will need to work much harder just to maintain their position, let alone to catch up (p: 12)."

Today, traditional factors of production - land, factories, machinery, and natural resources - are being superseded in importance by the knowledge, skills, and resourcefulness of people as the key source of productivity growth. The latest demonstration of this shift is the emergence of the services sector as the main driver of global economic change, instead of the manufacturing sector.

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The ePoor Response

A number of initiatives have brought out the despairing state of higher education in Pakistan, and in most Southern countries. While Peril and Promise identified the situation in developing countries generally, the report of the Task Force on Improvement in Higher Education in Pakistan (www.sche.gov.pk) highlighted the legion of problems in Pakistan's higher education sector. There is, moreover, a need to consider the role of higher education in producing, preserving and transmitting knowledge specifically for poverty eradication in the country.

The fundamental issue, again, is one of capacity to reform the higher education sector. Individuals in ePoor are currently associated with the Steering Committee on Higher Education, formed by the Government of Pakistan, to develop an implementation plan for higher education reform. While this Committee will exist for a limited time only (until 7 August, 2002), an international network known as the South-South Higher Education Reform Network (SSHERN) is emerging to examine these issues in all Southern countries. At the same time, a Pakistan chapter of the network is being established to develop civil society engagement with the reform effort.

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The Program

ePoor aims to mobilize intellectual resources from across the world, particularly in Southern countries, to support the reform of the higher education sector in the country. The program aims to integrate poverty eradication and globalization perspectives within the on-going reform effort in two ways:

Developing and working closely with the Secretariat of SSHERN;

Developing a network of committed individuals to build the capacity of appropriate higher education reform. In particular, ePoor has developed linkages with an informal group of Pakistani expatriates (mostly academics) known as The Boston Group to facilitate this program.

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