Research Culture in Pakistan

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8 November 2022
Benchmarking research trends in Pakistan’s
universities
globalvillagespace.com/benchmarking-research-trends-in-pakistans-universities/
Research activities in Pakistan are becoming limited and declining for the last few
decades. However, new universities have been established that grant higher degrees ,
still, the quality of research practices are in mourning conditions. It is a fact that the
socioeconomic progress of any country relies on innovative applications and the
commercialization of research.
Allah has bestowed enormous talents to the youth of Pakistan. Students at the university
level are not yet mentored and counseled properly to learn research skills compared to
developed countries like the USA, UK, Germany, France, Australia, etc. It has been
witnessed that research in Western countries starts from the bachelor’s degrees, and
they trained the youth in right direction. In contrast to developing countries like Pakistan,
students with master’s degrees even do not know how to start a research. Research
culture in Pakistan is lacking for many reasons. The most significant barrier in research is
the English language.
Most of our Youth is spending time in extra curricula. They take utmost interest in social
media like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube and so on. Sports is yet another
passion of our youth that intoxicate our brilliant minds. Only few people are taking interest

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in research; however, due to lack of counseling and mentoring, neither they grow well
nor they achieve as per their desires.
Pakistan is endowed with enormous natural resources and advanced capabilities in the
public and private sectors; however, the youth at this region are paralytic with intellectual
brains; they just read to pass their exams. The governmental institutions are lacking in
research contrary to the private sectors.
Research starts at graduation or post-graduation level; nevertheless, our students face
difficulty in research work at this stage. It has been astounding that most students do not
know critical thinking at the master’s and M.Phil levels ;however, they read only to pass
exams and in return produce nothing.
Pakistan’s education standard is far behind from international standards; old and outdated
curricula at the university level are yet another shortcomings that need to be addressed.
The research center in the Private and public sectors are Ill-equipped. As a result, they
produce low-quality research. Lack of funding for quality research is another bottleneck,
especially for Ph.D. research Programmes.
Our research institutions and universities produce research, but such research is limited
to lock shelves, and nobody dares to open it. Even our project stakeholders have never
asked for field research undertaken at the university level. Most of our universities do not
deposit research in higher education commission’s repositories.
The research produced in developing countries can not always take into account by
Western countries due to its poor analysis. Both teachers and students are
reprehensible for low research culture. Most of our Mphil and Ph.D. Scholars teach in
different organizations; neverthless, they do not guide the students that how to conduct
a research. Those who conduct a research are not properly evident-based research.
It is said that evidence-based research is a systematic and transparent way to inform a
new study that answers a valid, efficient, and inaccessible question. Teachers are known
as counseling masters; however, they do not produce intellect brain. It is said that
excellence comes with motivation. Critical thinking in Pakistan has no room in the
educational space, how new idea would penetrate our minds.
The lack of experimental laboratories and libraries is another aspect of Pakistan’s poor
research culture. A Majority of libraries present outdated material and experimental
laboratories are lacking wit quality equipment. What are the various causes of poor-
quality research in Pakistan? These are man, machine, material, management, methods,
environment, etc. From men’s perspectives, these are Lack of motivation in research
skills at the university level and unqualified personnel.
As far as machine affairs is concerned, we have outdated technologies and over-reliance
on manual methods. Regarding the material matter, we do not have quality material, and
most educational institutions lack standardization in their material. Conflict of interest is
yet another phenomenon. When we talk about management issues in research culture,

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it means they we do not have a vision, mission, and value system. Now coming to the
research methods, we as researchers do not follow the the quality in procedures and
above all, we as a nation are inferior in knowledge sharing.
Read more: Librarian’s Role in Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
We all are responsible for the poor culture of research trends in Pakistan . We are a
country with enormous talents; we have a 60% youth bulge. We can make them talented
with critical thinking. Research is an endeavor, everyone wants to be a researcher, but,
nobody want to do it. Raewyn Connel rightly said, “Research is something that everyone
can do, and everyone ought to do. It is simply collecting information and thinking
systematically about it.”
The writer is the Deputy Director of Library Services at the Institute of Strategic Studies
Islamabad. He can be reached at abidhussain@issi.org.pk.The views expressed in this
article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global
Village Space.
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