mordant wit

Dr Isa Daudpota, project leader, Centre for Frontier Technologies, Islamabad was fired from his job recently. Dr Daudpota has a Ph.D. from MIT, a prestigious American university, and has been a researcher at the US space agency, NASA. He has been writing on issues that concern raising the standard of science and education in Pakistan. His apparent sin was pointing out the phenomenon of fake degree in an article in Dawn's sister publication , the monthly Spider of November 2004. Apparently he ruffled some sensitive feathers and that led to the cancellation of his contract.

The sorry state of academics in general and of the sciences in particular Pakistan has often been highlighted in the media and is no hidden secret. Dr Ataur Rahman, an eminent scientist and researcher (and now chairman of the Higher Education Commission) has been in the forefront of the campaign for raising standards in science since the late 1980s.

The sorry state of science and technology is often attributed to the small number of doctorate degree holders. Hence, increasing the number of Ph.Ds is considered essential for raising standards and the HEC has launched an ambituous programme to do that.


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