A Legend Lost to Incompetence

(published in “The Dawn” on November 21, 2005 on page 15, col-1)
Dr. Syed Mansoor Sarwar, Ph.D.

It was spring 1981 and I was a fourth year Electrical Engineering student at the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore , when we heard that a fresh PhD faculty member had joined the department and that he would offer a course in Digital Systems. We also heard it through the grapevine that he was a tough professor, who would expect a lot from his students. Some called him genius. Because of his reputed toughness, only 11 students out of a class of over 50 ventured to take his course. I was one of those eleven students. This course gave us our first exposure to the world of microprocessors and their programming, algorithm design, sorting algorithms, Fibonacci numbers, and much more. True to his reputation, the instructor was extremely demanding, but an excellent communicator and teacher in the true sense. The end result was that students learnt a lot in the course. Looking back over two decades, I still believe that that was my best course at the UET. The course instructor was Dr Shahid Hussain Bokhari.

During the intervening 25 years, Dr Bokhari served the UET with selflessness and devotion, offered many graduate and undergraduate courses, and continuously revised the curricula of the various programs in order to keep them current and in line with international standards. His dedication and commitment to his students earned him the respect of thousands. During these years he also kept himself involved in cutting-edge research and frequently visited some of the world renowned research labs. He authored one book (published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston , USA ) and around half a century of technical papers, and supervised the first PhD in Computer Engineering in the country. Over 80% of his papers are Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) or Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) journal (mostly transactions) publications; most of the rest are IEEE or ACM sponsored conference publications. Some of the conferences in which he published were not IEEE or ACM sponsored but were of such high quality that legendary computer scientists such as Peter J Denning also presented papers in these conferences.

Dr Bokhari’s outstanding research accomplishments have earned him many honors, including a Certificate of Recognition from NASA in 1993 and inclusion in Marquis Who’s Who in the World in 1998. Because of his fundamental contribution to the mapping problem in parallel and distributed computing, he became the only resident Pakistani Fellow of the IEEE (USA) in 1997. In 2000, he became the only Pakistani Fellow of the ACM (USA) for his contributions in areas of automatic load balancing and partitioning of distributed processes. In 2003, Dr Bokhari achieved another major milestone in his professional career and became the only Pakistani named in the list of Highly Cited Researchers in Computer Science by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) (see www.isihighlycited.com). His papers have over 1000 citations (scholar.google.com), which is more than the number of citations of all the papers produced by all the faculty members in any of the renowned public or private sector institution of higher education in Pakistan, including all campuses of COMSATS, all campuses of FAST, all UETs, GIKI, LUMS, NED, Punjab University, UMT, and University of Karachi. The number of citations for all publications by the rest of the faculty in his department at the UET is not more than a decimal digit. Perhaps, the most remarkable thing about Dr Bokahri is that he earned all of these honors and brought laurels to Pakistan without much help from graduate students, because the UET, Lahore runs, primarily, part-time graduate programs. (It is meaningful to note that the UET professors who have been recently granted grade 21 do not have a single citation for any of their publications. Incidentally, Dr Bokhari was not granted grade 21 in the same round of reviews!)

Dr Bokahri’s brilliance and dedication to his profession have inspired many of his students over the years and several of them have become the finest researchers and writers in their own domains. I won’t exaggerate much if I say that it is because of him alone that the Electrical Engineering Department at the UET, Lahore has been perceived to be one of the premier places of learning in Computer Engineering and Computer Science.

Dr Bokhari’s dedication, professionalism, and rare accomplishments, brought him little respect from the petty-minded at the UET, Lahore . The highest authorities at the UET created circumstances so that he remained continuously frustrated. Yet, he remained steadfast in his efforts to convince the upper administration at the UET and the Higher Education Commission (HEC) that quality of education at any institution is closely linked with hiring and retention of high-quality faculty, and to suggest measures needed to achieve both. Unfortunately, the concerned authorities at both institutions of higher learning refused to listen to arguably the finest Computer Engineer and Computer Scientist our nation has ever produced. Eventually, after 25 years of outstanding service, he decided to leave the UET, Lahore , and the word is that he would leave Pakistan too. It won’t be overstatement to say that not many people in the world possess the package of achievements that Dr Bokhari does and his leaving Pakistan would be tantamount to Donald Knuth leaving the USA.

It may be too late to stop Dr Bokhari from leaving Pakistan but we still have time to take appropriate measures to stop further brain drain. This can be done only by proper analysis of the framework needed for successful running of academic institutions, identifying areas of weakness, and taking suitable steps to strengthen these areas. Four basic ingredients needed for smooth and successful operation of a public sector academic institution are faculty, students, infrastructure, and administration. Some of these elements are delicately inter-related. The most important of these elements are faculty and students—if you don’t have high-quality faculty or students, the other two become worthless. However, excellent infrastructure and able administrators are needed to recruit and retain first-class faculty. Quality of student intake improves with the other three elements in place. I will not get into the chicken and egg debate of whether high-quality students attract high-quality faculty, or vice versa—I have personally seen it work both ways. In any event, quality of students and infrastructure are not issues at the public sector institutions of higher education because they get the best student intake (primarily due to low tuition fees) and have large campuses and reasonably good buildings (thanks to your money, i.e., public funds). The major problem faced by our public sector universities is hiring and retention of first-rate faculty. For example, in the recent years the UET, Lahore , has been unable to recruit high-class faculty and retain some of the topnotch people who joined them in the years past. There are two main reasons for this: a) inadequate faculty salaries and b) incompetent upper administration. Unless considerable improvement is made in these areas, public institutions are doomed to become virtually worthless.

Faculty salaries at public sector institutions of higher education are abysmally low. So, faculty members usually take on other part-time jobs and/or run their own businesses to earn extra income. This happens at the expense of academics at their home institutions, which look like ghost towns after mid-day. Since this practice has been going on for many years, the academics at public sector institutions have deteriorated to almost a state of beyond repair. The only way out of this mess is to enhance faculty salaries at public institutions significantly and make them competitive to the private sector institutions. This would result in faculty members making focused effort at their primary jobs and improved academic environment. The “tenure track” and “foreign faculty hiring” schemes offered by the HEC are not solutions to these problems, because they are contract based, limited duration appointments.

The second fundamental problem at the public sector institutions of higher education is poor governance. Many of these institutions of higher learning are currently headed by those who have little to do with education, let alone higher education. People at the helm in some of the key institutions of education in the country have never been educationists, they don’t know how the mind of a true academician thinks, and they have no clue about managing higher education. The appointment of retired generals with meager academic qualifications as federal minister of education and vice chancellors of the major institutions of higher learning in the country is synonymous to appointing retired professors as the head of the armed forces and core commanders of major cities. And, this will not be acceptable to any thinking and rational person, because professors don’t go through the appropriate training needed to become a top army person, just like an army general does not go through the requisite rigor and preparation necessary to become a researcher and/or teacher at a university. Thus, I request the government to remove immediately all existing vice chancellors of public sector universities who do not have an earned PhD. Furthermore, the government should require that future vice chancellor appointees at any institution of higher learning must have an earned PhD in a pertinent subject area and minimum 20 years of relevant academic and/or industrial experience.

Anything short of implementing these recommendations will result in continued faculty dissatisfaction, leading to further brain drain and lowering of the already dwindling academic standards in our universities. The HEC can play a key role in implementing these proposals. This national body has helped higher education in several areas, but it can do much more. However, unless the HEC learns to trust the field workers like Dr Bokhari, it will only help ruin the very domain it wants to assist.

(The author is a professor of Computer Science and Engineering and the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Science and Technology at the University of Management and Technology (UMT), Lahore. He has over two decades of experience at institutions of higher education, mostly in the USA . He is the first author of four textbooks published by Addison-Wesley, Boston , USA . His books have been (or are being) used in over 200 colleges and universities in the USA, including the University of Texas at Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Arizona, Stevens Tech, University of California at Santa Barbara and Syracuse University. The Chinese and Spanish translations of his books are being used in China , Hong Kong , Spain , and Mexico)

Update: The author is now the Principal of Punjab University - College of Information Technology, Lahore.