Provision of housing to faculty and staff is good for campuses which have land to spare. Its a mechanism for creating a stable intellectual and scientific community. If properly organized and managed it can facilitate contact between students and faculty , promote research collaboration, and help to integrate the curricular and extra-mural programs. In Pakistan, where recruitment and retention of distinguished faculty is a major challenge, a well-conceived housing scheme can also serve as a magnet to crea te a stable environment of academic excellence. But to insure these benefits some basic principles must be observed. I did not imagine that in QAU these principles shall be grossly violated, and even in a university the public interest shall yield to pr ivate greed.
Friends in Pakistan inform that the housing scheme I had so naively welcomed has turned into another scam. Three hundred acres of university owned land are being divested at throw-away-below-market prices to faculty and staff. The first batch of plots we re assigned at March's end. Predictably, excitement has gripped the campus. The Vice Chancellor thanks the Prime Minister and her adviser Ms. Shahnaz Wazir Ali. Hopefully, that expression of gratitude is undeserved. For a more thoughtless policy decision is hard to imagine from an educated prime minister and her educator adviser.
For reasons we argue later in this essay, a decision to give away university owned land is wrong under any except in the circumstance of an institution's closing. In this case the wrong is the greater for the manner of squandering. Consider the following
:
The sole criterion for allocation is 10 years of service. Hence, those who are acquiring plots include those:
Who already have home\plots in Islamabad and elsewhere.
Who are former beneficiaries of government plots.
Who neither reside nor intend to reside in Islamabad.
Husband and wife working in university qualify for two plots.
Plots are priced 10-15 times below market value.
The University has so far collected 4 Crores for properties
valued in the open market at 45-60 crores.
No provision has been made for the reversion of the subsidized property to the university when an allottee leaves his\her job.
It is illegal, I am told, to sell the plots. But the rules governing sales have yet to be framed. So it stands to reason that some purchasers are known to have approached dealers to sell their plots at hefty prices. Sellers and dealers are busy figuring w
ays to skirt around whatever rules are offered. According to an unconfirmed report MNAs have also staked out a claim on the institutional land.
I am told that Qaid-i-Azam University's faculty and staff had been demanding housing plots for years. This government was sensitive to their demand. The argument holds depressing promises which I beg Ms. Bhutto and Ms. Wazir Ali to ponder. First, succes sive generations of QAU employees are entitled to making the same demand which, if similarly met, should transform the university into a crowded housing society. Second, why should not the employees of other institutions and services make the same demand? Consider the implications for government and country. Third, what message is the government trying to convey about its educational policy?
With a mere 95,000 students enrolled in degree institutions of dubious quality, Pakistan has one of the lowest ratio of university enrollment in the world. Our standards of higher education have fallen beyond measure. Hence, some 15000 Pakistani undergra duates are studying abroad costing Pakistan between $200-250 million dollars. The need to improve and widen higher education in the arts and sciences is desperate. We need land and resources allocated to improve the existing and add more universities.
What then are the ways to serve the university and its constituent without squandering its future? The golden rules are never to alienate the land from an academic institution, and never to render it legally or otherwise vulnerable to alienation. Nearly all distinguished universities the world over have followed this rule. All expanded exponentially over time and their property holdings increased steadily. Harvard expanded from the Yard to owning large swathes of Cambridge. Columbia University in New Yo rk grew similarly to cover new disciplines, create new faculties and professional schools. It is in the nature of knowledge to grow. So living, organic academic institutions must preserve their space for future growth. Universities which do not begin wi th enough land normally try to acquire more as they gain strength.
Housing is normally made available to faculty and staff on a rental basis. Occasionally, ownership right is offered. That is invariably a notch below the market rate and on terminal bases. After employee and spouse pass away the property reverts to the i nstitution. Dependents are compensated according to established formula which favors the institutions without hurting the individuals. If this rule is not observed, campus property shall be commercialized; the institution shall lose its asset; and over ti me the academic community will cease to exist. Hence, it is rare for academic institutions to sell land contiguous with their campus.
Occasionally, universities do sell excess land but then their purposes are two-fold. One, to meet deficits or shift investment they may sell lands and properties at market prices especially when they are away from their main campuses. Two, sales may made in the expectation of strengthening the academic environment. Thus Princeton University made allowances for the Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard for MIT, and Columbia for the School of Education which was founded on an autonomous charter. I am te mpted here to mention a personal experience.
It was the above examples that led me to briefly welcome a thought by Mr. Usmani, the Secretary of Education in 1993, that we solicit the Qaid-i-Azam University to yield to the proposed Khaldunia University, at a far heftier price than the present housin g scheme, a small portion of its vast land holdings. The idea made sense. An original expectation that QAU would develop an undergraduate program had not materialized, and Khaldunia could fulfill that need while adding to QAU the strengths of a fraternal academy next door. Mr. Usmani mentioned the matter to the then Vice Chancellor. He seemed pleased with the response, and advised me to meet the VC. A different gentleman than the present VC, he was obviously mindful of not offending the Education Secreta ry. He was quite rude when I called.
This was not entirely a bad thing. I thought that he was a jealous guardian of QAU's land holdings. As it turns out, the zealous guardianship of public trust has yielded to the instinct of individual ownership and private greed. Khaldunia -- whose acade mic proposal has elicited world wide praise -- still awaits the delivery of the government's modest land allocation while QAU is giving away to private ownership more than three times the acreage. It is sad indeed to witness educators become speculators, and politics remain in Pakistan a game of profit and power without vision or purpose. (END)
@Eqbal Ahmad. April 4, 1996