Page 54 - EducationWorld January 2021

International News

past governments… has been to excitedly announce new
science cities, technology parks, software hubs and centres
of excellence” but none of them have ultimately delivered.
“Our planners have no clue of how critically deficient Paki-
stan is in terms of high-level professors and researchers,”
he adds.

AUSTRALIA
Agonising visa delays

DOZENS OF PAKISTANI STUDENTS HAVE been
waiting up to 30 months to learn whether they will
be allowed into Oz for doctoral studies as the pan-
demic exposes Australia’s dismissive treatment of people
who fortify its research training community. Pakistani students in Australia: home ministry hurdles
Some 50 Pakistani postgrads say they have received scant
word on the progress of visa applications lodged during the tions,” he adds. Medical researcher Braira Wahid, who says
past two and a half years. Many have deferred scholarships she has heard nothing from home affairs since mid-2019,
multiple times, with some forced to switch universities after is now looking elsewhere. “My research portfolio is quite
offers expired. Some have paid “huge fees” retaking lapsed strong,” she says.
medical and language tests. Others have run out of options, Australia relies on foreigners to undertake science-relat-
with stipends and places cancelled. ed Ph Ds. They outnumber domestic students in areas such
The applicants include students and lecturers in phys- as engineering and information technology. Phil Honey-
ics, chemistry, engineering and health, with specialities in- wood, chief executive of the International Education Asso-
cluding solar cells, brain-computer interfaces and synthetic ciation of Australia, says other countries update prospective
cancer drugs. students about the status of visa applications, but home af-
Some say they have received no advice from Austra- fairs waits for clearances from all agencies before providing
lia’s department of home affairs since applying for visas any useful information. He suggests the department should
in mid-2019. Enquiries to the department elicit “generic “initiate some feedback mechanism” to alleviate applicants’
emails that your application is under routine processing”, “obvious stress”.
says mechanical engineer Najeeb Ullah. A recent home affairs report shows that average waiting
Civil engineer Tahir Saeed says the wait has been “tortur- times have blown out as the pandemic reduces processing
ous” for his family. Rizwan Younas, a Quetta-based chemi- activity. The median processing time for postgraduate re-
cal engineering lecturer, says the department should either search visas soared from 20 days in the March quarter to
accept or reject applications within 60 days. “It’s not just a 244 days between April and June — suggesting that the
visa, it’s my future,” he says. Times Higher Education un- pandemic has exposed a logjam of stalled applications that
derstands that visa applications from South Asians wanting are normally hidden in the statistics by high processing
to undertake STEM-related Ph Ds are routinely referred volumes.
to security agencies, which take turns to assess the risk of However home affairs spokespersons say the data
intellectual property theft. “should be viewed through the lens of Covid-19” and doesn’t
A home affairs spokesperson said character and secu- reflect the quality of its operations.
rity checking by other agencies could take “several months”
and explained that “offshore services” related to visa as- RUSSIA
sessments — including health checks and biometric col- Plagiarist politicians pandemic
lection — were being affected by Covid-19. But at least 27
applications were lodged well before the pandemic, which RESEARCHERS HAVE EXPOSED WIDESPREAD
has only slowed processing because previously submitted Ph D plagiarism among Russian regional gover-
evidence has passed its use-by date. Ironically, pandemic- nors, which they say is part of a broader culture of
related disruptions are the only thing stopping some stu- academic corruption in a country where ghostwriters are
dents from abandoning Australia after having held firm ini- routinely hired to win the rich and powerful the prestige
tially because they felt “ethically bound” to their prospective boost of a doctorate. Checking hundreds of dissertations
supervisors. online against other text revealed that half the governors
Physicist Abdul Khaliq says some friends are eyeing oth- who have a Ph D have committed plagiarism, according to
er countries. “But we are stuck in the middle of nowhere as two Russia-born academics based in Germany. In one case,
we can’t meet the requirements due to the pandemic restric- a governor’s dissertation was made up entirely of text that

54 EDUCATIONWORLD JANUARY 2021