2 The Structure and Governance of the Future AKU
     
    The successful start of new components of AKU will require much careful planning and high orders of academic and organisational leadership at their start. Once decisions have been taken by the Chancellor and Board to start the process toward establishing a new component, we envisage the appointment of Planning Groups or Task Forces that will scrutinise the feasibility of the proposed component, propose broad outlines of its design and identify leadership for its planning and staffing. A possible pattern might be that the chairman or principal academic leader on the Task Force would be the potential organiser of the component. We do not think this Commission should try to specify this process further. But we do find it evident that it will require engagement and guidance from the central administration and Board from an early point. (We have heard Board members express the view that the Board was engaged too late in the establishment of IED.)
     
  2.8 The Commission's view is that the senior executive leadership of AKU in the immediate future will depend on the Acting Rector, the President and a new officer called tentatively a Director of University Planning, these officers being joined where pertinent by the DirectorGeneral of the hospital. This pattern for the near future leaves open numerous possibilities for the evolution of AKU's leadership in the longer run. It has, for example, been practice thus far that the positions of Acting Rector and Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences should be joined. We would presume that this would not be the case as the University grows and diversifies and a fullfledged Rector is appointed. The naming of a Rector will become a question of increasing immediacy as the University grows. It may indeed have to be faced no later than the 1997 conclusion of the present three-year appointment of Dr. Dirks as Acting Rector. The Commission has therefore given thought to the qualifications of future Rectors of AKU.
     
  2.9 Whatever their backgrounds, the future Rectors of AKU must be persons with a high order of personal qualifications. We repeat the Harvard Report's call for a Rector having "a distinguished record as an educator and administrator of academic and research enterprises, a broad international acquaintance, and a strong interest in the problems of the Third World". A Rector, even with such versatile and stellar qualifications, will still need much support from the leadership of the branches of the. University, from the Board of Trustees and the senior, central executive officers of the University. We believe that the future central administration of AKU can and should be small. But it will have very important functions in giving coherence and orderly development to the University, mobilising and managing the resources it will need, and relating it to the different national and international communities of which it is a part.
     
  2.10 In view of the nature of AKU, including, its avowedly international character, the Commission considers that the eventtial appointment of a Muslim rector would be a natural expectation. Such an appointment would have consequences for the image and character of AKU that would vary with the background and qualities of the person. And it would, of course. affect the balance of competencies and responsibilities that has led to the present "troika" in the senior leadership of the University.
     
  2.11 However talented AKU's future rectors may be they are unlikely to be able to fulfil their functions without sharing them with other senior officers. Some pattern of collegial leadership. as at present and in the near-term future we bave projected, appears as a likely longer-term prospect for AKU. It would be natural for the Director of University Planning we have proposed to become a Vice-Rector. The multifarious functions now assumed by the President will continue to fall on the central administration of the University; they will shift somewhat III character as AKU must relate to other national settings and to new international linkages, but they will continue to have a vital importance for the University. We thus believe that a position like that Mr. Shamsh Kassim-Lakha now fills under the designation "President of the University Centre" will continue to be needed in AKU's foreseeable future. We do not think it possible at the present time to see clearly what the responsibilities of this position will be, twenty or thirty years hence, or what an appropriate designation for it might be, but that it will persist and merit high station alongside the Rector is evident to us.
     
  2.12 Reverting now to some questions arising as we think of the near-term future of AKU. We recall that the Commission has been concerned throughout its deliberations with the problem of reconciling and balancing the needs of the existing University in Karachi with planning and development of the University in other fields and elsewhere. Given the inevitable and perfectly justifiable pressure from AKUMC and IED for their further development, the diversification and intern ationalisation of AKU to which this Report is largely devoted threatens to remain only deferred aspiration unless there is a definite organisational commitment to it. We have felt this problem to be sufficiently serious that we have explored various ways in which appropriate balance might be assured.
     
    The commitment of the present Acting Rector to a broad development of AKU, and the support for such views that we have found in our meetings with faculty and staff in Karachi have somewhat eased these concerns. We do, however, stress the importance of commitment to planning and development for the whole University and the appointment of the officer we have proposed to share with the Acting Rector and President in these responsibilities. Supported by a commitment of the Chancellor and the Board to an orderly process, we believe this strengthened executive leadership can provide a locus for strategic planning and active advocacy for new developments.
     
    Some members of the Commission have not been confident that this sort of central leadership will be sufficient to assure a balanced development of AKU. Competition for AKU's limited resources has worked thus far to the disadvantage of research and academic graduate study in AKU's development. Several of the new components we have projected in AKU would emphasise research and graduate study, and there has been in the Commission a disposition to seek a framework in which such components might be specially fostered. This,framework has been described as an "institute for advanced studies" or, latterly, with some increased emphasis on graduate studies, as a "Graduate School of Advanced Studies". Essentially what this proposed structural element of AKU would do would be to serve as a focus and advocate for University activities in research and graduate study. The Commission reached no consensus on the necessity or desirability of this sort of element in AKU, but it was the subject of much concern and extended discussion and as such deserves this mention in our Report.

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