When Saad*, a bright-eyed, first-year student, attended his university’s orientation week, he was excited and filled with hope for the next four years to come.

After all, he had secured a full scholarship along with his admission at the elite Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums). Hailing from a remote area of Punjab, Saad felt he had succeeded against all odds. He felt invincible. Until he interacted with his peers.

As the day progressed, students were asked to introduce themselves. Saad was stunned, for all his peers were speaking in fluent English, often with Western accents. Overwhelmed with anxiety, he became deeply conscious of his broken English, entwined with a strong Punjabi accent. He feared judgement from the fellow students.

Saad quietly left his group without introducing himself and ignored his orientation group’s phone calls. He did not attend the rest of the orientation events.

Despite the opportunities provided by Pakistan’s top universities to attract talented but underprivileged students, much more needs to be done to allow them to fit in after they are admitted…

CULTURE SHOCK

This is not the story of just one Saad. Almost all students from remote areas who are enrolled in reputable universities — such as Lums, Habib University, and the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) — encounter the humiliation of not fitting in.

Firstly, for students like Saad, it is a big shock to get accustomed to the culture at these top universities, which is vastly different from the one they are usually brought up in.

“I belong to an underprivileged area and studied at an all-boys’ schools,” says Saad. “I have no idea of what the culture is like in schools that follow the Cambridge system.”

Every year, a few top universities in Pakistan provide financial assistance to students who excel academically and belong to humble socio-economic backgrounds.

These scholarships can be in the form of need-based financial aid or through the merit-cum-need-based National Outreach Programme (NOP) and the National Talent Hunt Programme (NTHP). Saad is one of the few students in his university who have been granted admission on the basis of a fully-funded NOP scholarship.

While the diversity initiative sounds promising, it does not account for how students from remote backgrounds feel uncomfortable in a predominantly elitist set-up. There are expectations to conform: to dress differently, act a certain way, talk in a language that is foreign to them, and live far away from their home with a lifestyle that they cannot relate to.

Often, failure to comply with these norms at elite institutions results in the isolation of these students from the majority of the student body. Since these students are from remote areas, their difference in mindset and conflicting beliefs makes them highly hesitant to socialise with their peers.

TWO WORLDS

Inevitably, this leads to the birth of two different groups in such universities: those with financial aid and those without it. The class divide is visible in these groups.

Vishal* hails from the remote area of Tharparkar in Sindh and studies at the IBA. Before coming to IBA, he would help his father in running a grocery shop. He recounts how he often found himself feeling inferior around students who came from renowned schools and how students from well-to-do families kept him at arm’s length.

“They will talk to you but will not be friends with you. An entire year passes feeling inferior to those people around you,” Vishal laments.

Sometimes, Vishal questions whether he even deserves to be at IBA, because his peers are much more privileged in terms of finances, previous studies and social connections. 

The obvious yet invisible wall between students on financial assistance and the rest of the majority is marked by differences of language, connections and social beliefs.

Students of local boards are in the minority in these prestigious universities as compared to students from the Cambridge system. The majority, from O- and A-level backgrounds, come to these top universities in groups from the same schools and colleges, and naturally gravitate to each other, creating cliques.

Those on financial aid, therefore, retreat to friend circles consisting entirely of students on scholarships, which become a safe space where they will not be judged. This often intersects with ethnicity and language. At IBA, for example, students hailing from Sindh talk in Sindhi with each other, as a gesture of social equality.

As mentioned by Vishal, the class divide compels some students from the upper class to be unsympathetic towards students from the lower classes, as they are unable to share consistent beliefs. 

Hence, despite the attempts at fostering diversity, the decades-old educational apartheid in Pakistan leads students to live within their own bubbles.

LANGUAGE AS A DIVIDER

Moreover, language barriers resulting from class divisions completely alter these students’ ability to engage with one another.

In the Cambridge system, one’s social status is established through the type of early schooling. The more Westernised a student is and the more fluent he or she is in English, the higher the social status accorded to him or her. In contrast, government schools teach subjects in Urdu and English is taught only as a subject, not a language to be learned.

Saba*, a first-year Social Sciences student and scholarship recipient at IBA, recalls her initiation into this new world. She says that when teachers started conducting their lectures, they were speaking “completely in English”, and they were speaking so fast that she was unable to grasp the concepts, although she was able to understand what they were saying.

It takes time for students from local boards and remote areas to comprehend a language that isn’t familiar to them, which puts them at an automatic academic and social disadvantage compared to students from the Cambridge system.

SOCIALLY INCAPACITATED

In order to fit in with the majority of people on campus, students on financial assistance may often choose to engage in behaviours that are at odds with their normal personality.

Ayesha*, a scholarship student at Habib University affirms that, during her first two years, she adopted an unnaturally cheerful, “bubbly, likeable persona”, just to make friends.

Similarly, Saad laments that he realised only after a year how necessary it was to make changes, such as improving his style of dress, to fit in. He mentions with a smile how some girls on campus ignore you if they get to learn that you are a financial aid student, so for the sake of acceptance you have to look and act like you aren’t one.

Because of these factors, some students tie themselves up in mental knots. Their minds become riddled with frustration as they try to build bridges around the social, academic and personal differences of their peers.

Unfortunately, this effort usually backfires for most and forces them back into their exclusive crowds, robbing them of the opportunity to connect with the diverse student body in these universities.

THE WAY FORWARD

It is important to state that the scholarships, financial aid and the other awards that allow disadvantaged students to be a part of the finest institutions of Pakistan, are not the issue.

They have given many deserving students the chance to excel and make a better life for themselves by helping them get into renowned postgraduate programmes abroad, and finding jobs that otherwise would have been nearly impossible for them to get.

But universities should consider sensitivity training for staff, faculty and students. These trainings can focus on increasing awareness on how to interact with empathy with students from different backgrounds.

The students enrolled in scholarship programmes should also be provided with additional support, in the form of peer support, language coaching and extracurricular financial support.

“Universities should change their attitude from one that treats these students as ‘charity cases’ to one that values these students from diverse backgrounds as assets for their university,” says Dr Nida Kirmani, a sociology professor at Lums. “The first step would be to talk to the students from these programmes about their experiences and take their views and suggestions into account.”  

University years are a transformational time for students. It is not only the right of underprivileged students but also the responsibility of the institution to make it a rewarding experience for them. In order for these talented and versatile students to become the best version of themselves, they should be provided with a fair and equal opportunity to be able to achieve it.

**Name changed to protect privacy*

Mutee-ur-Rehman is a Sophomore pursuing a degree in the Department of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts (SSLA) at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA).

Fatima Khan is a recent graduate from the Department of SSLA at IBA

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 13th, 2023