THE ROLE OF PRIVATE SECTOR IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

The major purpose of the study was to examine the role of private sector in higher education in Pakistan by adopting descriptive method of research. The main objectives of the study were to compare the views of administrators, teachers and students about the quality of various aspects of higher education, to compare the views of administrators both male and female, permanent and contract based, about the quality of various aspects of higher education, to compare the views of male teachers and female teachers, permanent, contract based and visiting teaching faculty, about the quality of various aspects of higher education, to compare the views of male students and female students about the quality of various aspects of higher education, to determine the share of private sector of higher education in the term of students’ enrolment and teaching faculty and to suggest measures for improvement of private sector universities in Pakistan. As the study was conducted at national level, the population of the study constituted 270 administrators, 6180 teachers and 61108 students in existing 54 private universities and degree awarding institutions of Pakistan. Method of cluster sampling was used to select the study sample of 840 people, which was carried out in two stages. At the first stage, 12 clusters of universities were randomly chosen out of the total population of the private universities. At the second stage, 60 administrators, 180 teachers and 600 students were selected through random sampling procedure with five administrators, 15 teachers and 50 students from each selected cluster. Three questionnaires (one each for administrators, teachers and students), developed and refined through pre-testing, were used as measuring instruments to collect data. The researcher personally visited each university and collected data from the sample. The collected data was tabulated and interpreted by using t-test and ANOVA. It was concluded that the role played by private sector in higher education was of considerable value. All respondents were found to have positive opinion about the availability of internet facilities, encouragement of teachers for students class participation, teachers’ ability to create conducive class environment for learning and wholesome attitude of teachers toward their students. Nevertheless, they expressed slightly negative opinion about the appropriateness of instructional facilities, sufficiency of books/periodicals available in the library, professional training of teachers, teachers’ command over the subject matter, teachers’ encouragement in promoting critical and creative thinking among students, relevance of the subjects and the content to present and future needs of society and quality of research. All respondents exhibited fairly negative opinion about selection of students during admission on the basis of their merit and motivation and competitiveness of the private sector graduates with public sector universities. Male respondents exhibited more positive views about the quality of various aspects of higher education. Private sector universities shared the load of higher education to the extent of 15 percent in terms of student community and 16.5 percent in terms of teaching staff.