A lot of seminars, workshops and meetings are held at Ministry of Higher Education and the universities on different issues such as improving teaching quality, e-learning, English as the language of instruction, gender, women‘s rights and so on. Also, some projects are implemented under these names on which tens of millions of dollars are spent. Officials and the staff of the ministry and universities willingly participate in these workshops because most of such meetings are held with the financial support of foreign organizations. These meetings offer plenty of food, tea and cookies as refreshment. Pictures and videos are taken and a good report is made.
Sometimes the works and projects of some organizations are done just with holding meetings, but they don’t have any other achievement. And, many of such seminars and projects do not have a sustainable benefit for the universities, lecturers or students. Some years ago, I participated in three different meetings in the conference hall at Ministry of Higher Education that were held about curriculum. Many speakers (such as deputy minister, director general, director and some lecturers), in all the three meetings repeated their presentations. Chancellors and academic deputies of different universities, based in other provinces, were invited to those meetings. They were given the expenses of travels, accommodation as well as daily costs. The expenses of those meetings were too much in in comparison to their effectiveness.
Moreover, a number of seminars were held regarding making strategic plans of the ministry (2015-2020). As I got the information, all the budget that was specified for making the plan was not spent. Therefore, it was considered better to hold another meeting in order to receive comments on the strategic plan. But unfortunately, after several years (November 2016), the strategic plan of Ministry of Higher Education, which is the most important document for the future of higher education, has not been finalized. According to two different sources*, the World Bank has spent either 300,000 dollars or 2.6 million dollars on making the strategic plan.
Similarly, a great sum of money is spent on useless seminars and workshops in different offices in Afghanistan. Also, many senior authorities are so busy with such seminars that they do not have time to think about and execute their own duties. Actually, a project should be implemented in a sector after thorough analysis and evaluation of that sector’s problems. Project means accomplishing certain activities with specific budget to achieve certain goal(s) in a specific amount of time. But for some, it means spending money without having any goal or achievement.
If there is a problem, it should be discussed with the people involved and its practical solutions should be measured. Then a project should be proposed for the solution of the problems in order to solve problems and achieve our goals. Supporting the works of a project by organizations and people involved plays an important role in success of the project. I would like to present my own example here:
Seven years ago, I witnessed a main problem of students in the Faculty of Medicine at Nangarhar University. They used handwritten lecture notes, written twenty to thirty years ago, as the only teaching materials and textbooks. Even the students did not have those lecture-notes for many subjects; therefore, whatever their teachers taught them, they would note or learn the lectures by rote. That is, they would write down the notes on exam papers. The lecturers also designed questions for exams in the limited range of their lecture notes. This way, many students did not understand many subjects because the quality of teaching was too low. Thus, this is one of the reasons why fresh graduates of the Faculty of Medicine do not know a lot of medical issues and are not professional doctors.
After seeing and evaluating the problem, I discussed it with the students, lecturers, dean of Faculty of Medicine at Nangarhar University, deputy of the faculty, chancellor of Nangarhar University, deputies of the university, as well as with authorities of Kabul University and Kabul Medical University. Then I started a project of Publishing Textbooks for Afghan Universities. At the beginning, over 12 teachers got ready, without any material support, to write and type their lecture notes in form of books, update textbooks and submit them to our project for publication. This project is still ongoing. So far, more than 270 textbooks have been published and distributed to all Afghan universities. Their softcopies are also available to everyone on the internet for free.
My purpose behind mentioning this example is that different aspects of higher education should be studied, evaluated, and discussed with students, teachers and other staff in order to cooperatively find solutions for the problems; not that foreigners should come and tell us what we need. And then they spend millions of dollars whereas priority is not placed on students, teachers or universities.
For instance, in the last 15 years, tens of millions of dollars were spent in the name of gender and women’s rights. However, until a short time ago, there was no toilet for female students in the large universities while there were great expenses in the name of female students and gender—and the expenses are still on going in the same manner.
Another example is that the universities (even the ministry) do not have continuous electricity. However some are trying to start projects on E-learning and their seminars on the subject are held in various places which cost millions of dollars.
I suggest that we should meet students to see what problems they have, meet teachers to ask them what they want, visit different departments of the universities to see what they need. After that we can launch projects and spend money; we can propose our projects to international donors to solve our problems.
I have not seen, so far, any authority of the ministry or universities who have submitted a proposal regarding their works for the solution of current and future challenges. In a meeting, a foreigner asked a deputy of a university about what the problems of that university were so that those problems could be thought about and worked on. The question was answered that the university needed everything that could be offered. “If you can donate a single item such as a pen,” said the deputy, “please, do it.” The foreigner was astonished. Thus nothing was done for the university.
A ministry and a university (a minister and a chancellor) should have a vision for their administration: what to achieve for the organization in cooperation with colleagues and with support of donors. Making a work plan is essential for progress, instead of spending time at the office every day just signing documents and participating in meetings. The most important responsibility of senior officials is to provide guidance and appropriate work conditions for employees, so that they can try their best in their daily work. This way, they can be trained well in their fields and can innovate as well.
*Based on verbal information of two employees of Higher Education Development Program at the Ministry of Higher Education in Kabul. Yahya Wardak, 2016, Kabul/Afghanistan
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