Keywords (Extracted from title, table of contents and
abstract of thesis)
Administrators, Cluster, Sampling,
Nevertheless, Appropriateness, Exhibited, Higher, Education,
Private, Sector, Role, Community |
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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.
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