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Permalink Reply by Aamir A. Farooqui on April 27, 2008 at 10:39pm

Dear Riaz sahib;
NO it is the not money which can attract the good faculty. It the environment, current admin is not supportive of young faculty. I do not understand why the govt. can not get a competent VC. Please read my articles in Pakistanlink NED University Deteriorating Standards and in the attachement.

Thanks,
Aamir

Attachments:

• NED University Deteriorating Standards Part II.pdf, 873 KB

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Permalink Reply by Muhammad Zeeshan Zia on April 28, 2008 at 10:19am

>> NO it is the not money which can attract the good faculty.

I beg to differ slightly. Money does make a lot of difference. The salaries of the teachers is very small here (I have worked as a Lecturer for some 10 months, after having been a student for 4 years just recently)...An Assistant Professor with a Masters degree from a well-renowned German university and B.E. (Electrical) position holder from NED....gets around Rs. 35,000 while in a private university like FAST the same person can make Rs. 75k....this individual graduated from NED 5 years ago and has served the university for about 2.5 years....while many of my classfellows (maybe around 20% of the batch of 140) who graduated just one year before from Electronic Engg. NED are making Rs. 40,000-50,000 in different multinationals doing mostly the job of a technician. Now, this individual can afford to continue this job for his satisfaction (belonging to a well-to-do family), serving the humanity!....however, that is not possible for some middle class individual who has to support a family, and who could be getting much higher salaries abroad or in private universities.

This salary is severely limiting good faculty from even applying for the positions. And the advertisements for Asst. Prof, Associate Professor, and Professor in almost all departments go unapplied for. I am pursuing my Masters and intend to get a PhD after this, and also want to go back to Pakistan after completing...However, I won't be willing to join NED, primarily because of the salary (a very bright Mechanical Engineering PhD holder from the well-renowned Max-Plank Institute, Germany was offered Rs. 45k per month...who could easily get more than one lac Rupees in a private university).

Ofcourse, there are administrative problems which also sometimes cause good faculty, who somehow come to NED - to leave. For example, there was the case of Prof. Dr. Abid Karim who had to leave after serving a few years, because he had a specialization in Opto-electronics and the V.C. forced him to become the director for an 'Instrumentation Center' being established at NED. So, he left for Bahria university...another case was of Dr. Zainab R. Zaidi, who was forced to leave on the grounds that she didn't attend the two days 'teaching seminar' and didn't like to sign a sheet whenever she entered and left the premises of the department...But, I don't think just changing the V.C. can solve a problem like this; the problem is with the whole system...which has become highly resistive for any positive change. Ofcourse, lesser qualified individuals have become senior faculty (Professors, Chairmen, Associate and Assistant Professors)....because the PhD rule (that one cannot get promoted to the position of an Associate Professor) came just a few years back....

Still in my humble opinion, the primary cause for the faculty problem is the salary...if the salary goes up, I am sure the HEC PhD scholars (and ppl like myself) who will start returning in a year or two, will be willing to join the faculty..and after a sufficient number of new faces have entered NED, we can see a pleasing change.

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Permalink Reply by khalid Hassan on May 3, 2008 at 11:28am

I agree with Zeshan's opinion that Compensation does matter and is one of the major decisive factor to attract competent faculty but at the same note, work environment is also very crucial to keep the faculty for considerable period of time. If they are not given the space and authority to do what they do best and they are tied with the RED TAPE & Bureaucracy, then eventually we will end up with the type of faculty that we have now. (I mean no disrespect to any one but we all know the credentials of our senior/junior faculty members, i.e., almost no research at all, several decade old teaching materials, lectures, even test papers). I heard about Dr. ATTA’s program about hiring qualified Ph.D's with proven track records with very competitive salaries with one condition, that is to keep their jobs they have to be able to publish certain number of research papers in international scientific journals every year or so. I think this would be the best stimulus that is needed in our higher education, especially in science and technology sector. The problem is no matter what salary is paid or what facility is provided, unless there is a research and development culture is present, every thing will turn down to the old fashioned 9-5 easy going, cool, no hassle teaching job.

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Permalink Reply by Riaz Haq on May 4, 2008 at 6:40pm

I did an online survey last year of about 1000 NEDians including alumni, students, faculty etc. Money was an issue, particularly faculty salaries and curriculum quality in the top 5 issues. However, the #1 issue cited by the majority was lack of vision by the NED administration. If you do not articulate a vision backed up by clear goals. workable strategy and concrete plans, it is hard to move forward to accomplish anything great...such as preparing engineers for the challenges facing them now and expected in the future. It also involves establishing close industry-academia alliances and joint research projects with the assistance of alumni working in Pakistan and overseas.

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Permalink Reply by Aqsa Hafeez on May 8, 2008 at 6:05am

Well, money does matter !! There isn't any doubt about it.

Be it low salaries or the monopoly of Grey-heads or any other reason
No matter what the grounds are we are deprived of quality teachers and this is quite an alarming situation!!
I am afraid where are the labs which are being facilitated by the FUNDS? Even in our Electrical Project Lab we don't have a proper oscilloscope. The systems sucks big time and so do the faculty and management ! University is ISO certified but still the rights of students are badly humiliated, no freedom of expressions, no regard to their self-respect. I know i am sounding a bit childish but thats what they do !!

WE HAVE GOT THE BEST OF WORST FACULTY HERE!! (ain't talking about the few exceptions)

And Alumni are pride and support of any organization,they have their roles to play and to serve back . I wonder,why NED don't have any official alumni association yet. I strongly appreciate the idea for setting up an alumni association to exert some pressure at the high officials and to bring some constructive change ! The time is now to unleash the silver lining of the NEDian cloud.

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Permalink Reply by M. Afzal on May 22, 2008 at 2:01pm

I absolutely agree that all brand name institutions have an Alumini Organization. How come at NED thought about that. Its the alumini organization which brings a lot of value to an institution. I would say that NED should have some seats for Aluminia's Childern also. Mr. Riaz probably can help to set up NED Alumini Organization. Regards, M. Afzal

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Permalink Reply by Riaz Haq on May 29, 2008 at 10:18pm

For what it's worth, it's been pointed out by Azhar Tufail (NED Alumni Assoc of UAE) that Aamir Farooqui "did his graduation in Electronics Engineering from Dawood College, and was from batch 1986-1987. We all know what happened at later stage, when NED University revoked the recognition of Dawood College. "

I am personally not taking a position on this issue. This is just in the spirit of full disclosure that I am letting you know this information. You are free to draw your own conclusions.

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Permalink Reply by Riaz Haq on May 30, 2008 at 7:36am

Here's a note from an NED faculty member re Aamir:
"As a matter of fact, Dr. Aamir has helped many ned students in their
final year project in digital design, getting admission abroad and in
getting jobs during late 90s and early this century. He is a known
person in the field of VLSI. I also used to think he was an old
nedian. He even held some competition and gave awards from his pocket
and contacts. I think two out of three award winning groups belonged
to ned.
But something happened (may be the way his proposals were dropped),
that charged him. His anger is obvious while arguing his case."

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