What's higher in 'higher education'?

"The rich cultural traditions in these areas [arts and humanities] need to be nurtured further to create an enlightened soft global image of our society, add value to our economy through creative and performing arts and design, tourism and highlight our ethical and aesthetic values."

That was from the "vision 2025" document, Higher Education Commission, Pakistan. Cracked me up. In fact, the whole document is riddled with corporate bullshit: "knowledge economy," "productivity," "entrepreneurs,", "innovation," etc., etc. Universities are supposed to make the land of the pure the "next Asian tiger." There is also a lot of tosh about the "fourth industrial revolution" and "embedding technology" in classroom teaching. I suspect that by now you can probably guess that my views are opposed to nearly all of this tripe. The philistines are quite good at cutting and pasting. 

Of course, what no-one wants to address is the startling mediocrity one finds in these universities (not to mention the fundamentalism or half-baked conservatism). Also, the financial corruption that has seen the mushrooming of "franchises" and "distance learning". All that goes unmentioned by the HEC clowns. The bureaucrats and their fantastically paid consultants are a joke, beyond a joke, even; spewing out their vacuous drivel will do nothing but ensure years of gaming and posturing.   

But the passage above in particular had me reeling (the VC didn't see the funny side of it, of course). It's hard to single out what is the most ridiculous aspect of it. But if pressed I'd say it is the idea that we should highlight our ethical and aesthetic values.

Excellence in Leadership, Governance and Management of HEIs, 

Strengthening systems of Research, Innovation and Commercialization and and linking the ingredients of triple helix of Academe, Government and Business Entrepreneurs, Use of available and evolving Information Communication Technology resources in Teaching and Research, Technology Embedded Academic Programming to prepare scholars to participate effectively in the emerging “Fourth Industrial Revolution”

Good grief!