Students pursuing career-based education were left dismayed by the remarks of the Punjab’s Minister for Higher Education, Raja Yassir Humayun Sarfraz, regarding students’ learning abilities and the level of skills of Pakistani graduates.
The minister’s comments were in response to a question during a press conference on Tuesday about students condemning the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for out-of-syllabus questions in the recent MDCAT examinations.
He replied that such a mindset was “absolutely wrong”, and that “unless and until the students are able to develop a habit of responding to unseen topics, they will never be able to progress”.
“Why are our graduates unable to compete with their international counterparts?” he retorted.
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Pakistani students are used to writing rote-learned answers in tests, and whenever an attempt is made to improve the system, people resist.
“I believe whatever the HEC is doing is correct although I’m in no way related to the HEC, which is a federal institution,” the minister added.
While some felt that the minister was right, many students felt insulted by his comments. A lot of them expressed their rage on Twitter, lamenting how the situation showed that they would ‘never be able to get justice.’
Here is how students reacted:
I think he is right. Because when ever I interview new graduates they're like 0. they show their selfs like MBA BBA MBBs But during the interview they're like nothing. I appreciate this. Stop this rata method and start learnings. I hope you understand #saveourfuture https://t.co/GMmr2ZjZQh
— Arham ✨💜 (@IamAbdulArham) December 15, 2020
https://twitter.com/educationkobdlo/status/1338782658151768067
#SaveOurFuture Go PMC Go https://t.co/goMUDXZwVc
— Blank (@steve_mining) December 15, 2020
Firstly be on your standard then compare to others …just disguisting excuses to defend themselves ..#SaveOurFuture https://t.co/kM6rhq7kyr
— Iam Chaya (@IamChaya3) December 15, 2020
https://twitter.com/SButt95537008/status/1338887336344625157
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PMC on ‘Out-of-Syllabus’ Questions
After considering candidates’ protests against the out-of-syllabus questions in the MDCAT examinations, the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) has released the details of a post-analysis of the exam to eliminate the ambiguity regarding the results.
The commission identified 14 of 200 questions as either ambiguous or discriminatory by ‘analyzing the answers of the candidates, the formation of questions, or which were below the cut-off benchmark of the discrimination index’. Consequently, all the candidates were granted equal marks for the questions in concern.
76% of IIT India students are hired by international companies on graduation. So please recognise that we are hopelessly behind in educational standard of university graduates. Major IT companies in US are headed by IIT graduates.
Punjab Minister is right. Rote learning (prevalent in medical field) must be discouraged and concept building through proper understanding must be encouraged.
This problem is prevalent in other fields too like engineering. Vast majority of engineering graduates too are worthless for use in industry without significant time, effort and financial investment in their learning by employers whom they leave as soon as they are finally able to start returning on that investment by working on money generating projects. Professional ethics are mostly lacking in new graduates in the race for ‘more’.
Further, anyone having more than one employment in two to three years is a red flag for employers since that person will likely not stick around for long.