It is my pleasant duty to wind up the dialogue in the next few minutes.

I think we heard today in the presentations, three critical implications in the reports for Pakistan. Firstly, there is a critical need for clear standards and systems that promote good governance in Higher Education institutions.

Secondly, there is a need for partnerships both inside and outside Pakistan to promote quality, build the strengths and take advantage of modern technology.

And we also heard clearly that the World Bank and UNESCO sponsored this report -- a very promising sign for Higher Education.

There is an increased hope for support for Higher Education from these international agencies and from both the Federal Government and the Provinces and the support and encouragement from the governor, the Minister of Education and Chairman of the University Grants Commission, I think this was extremely encouraging.

In the panel discussions, we concentrated quite a lot on the issues of merit as a basis for enrollment, what constitutes merit, how it should be evaluated, the role of individual institutions and the prerogatives of individual institutions in determining merit; and then we moved on to the question of where do we draw the line between the private sector and public sector, and tertiary education versus primary and secondary education. It is not an either or situation. We heard that it is really both -- we cannot do one without the other.

We heard a very interesting set of statements about the need to redress the neglect of Higher Education. We heard about the equity consequences of research allocations in the past, which required rebalancing. This was a very thoughtful set of suggestions that came forth: we said don't forget the supply side, but don't forget the demand side as well because that is what we determined at the end of the day how things work out. While rebalancing Higher Education the demand side will make it score.

We talked about improving the resource base for universities and institutions of Higher Education and allocation of more resources for this purpose; we noted that Sindh has taken a lead in encouraging private sector Higher Education while not neglecting the public sector institutions. We at that point also heard that public sector universities have made a huge contribution to the development of this nation and we are not to overlook its value and infact we need to build on what has been achieved by the public sector.

We cannot overlook this point. The question is how can we build their existing strengths, how we get over the wounds that they may have suffered in the last few years? We spoke and dialogued about the value of vocational and technical education which the report addresses and we said, this is probably important for us in Pakistan and it was heartening to see that pottery has indeed been introduced in schools and then many other subjects are coming along.

We then came to a number of wise observations by the panel and by you the audience. We heard about the value of quality and that it is achieved by the brushing of minds and not by the punching of computer keys and just information technology. We heard about the relevance of Higher Education to rural development and how this can be achieved.

Turning to financing issues the question in my mind is not whether the World Bank is influencing our country and how it is influencing it, but I personally think how can we influence the World Bank to walk the talk? Because they have supported the creation of this report and said this is an important activity - wonderful. Now how can we with the help of the wisdom in this report and wisdom around this room and elsewhere, how can we persuade the World Bank, UNESCO, Asian Development Bank and other international agencies to say this is where we want to put our support to whatever appropriate conditions and issues that might come up. I think that to be a very major issue because it is not possible at least for the foreseeable future to make major re-allocation of resources -- we can make about a 5% or 10% change but a huge change is not possible in resource allocation.

The suggestion for education of university administrators was an excellent one and which we are not to overlook because most of the time we always say that our universities are in trouble because there is no money; Pakistan is in trouble because we are poor. I happen to have a totally different view. I think Pakistan or universities or institutions are in trouble because their management is usually bad. A good manager can make a lot of whatever resources are available and build on those resources and encourage other people to contribute more resources because you have an efficient use of resources even if the word efficient does not appear in some other books.

I heard very strong pull in the report, in the presentations, in what the panelist and some of you had to say, about the need to address moral development. Considering the circumstances existing in Pakistan my own view is that moral reasoning and the teaching of ethics and culture and the values of civilization is probably a greater priority for Pakistan today than sciences and technology. I say that because we may have been able to blow up the bomb but we do not know how to govern ourselves yet. We really have to think in terms of how moral reasoning and ethical values can be inculcated in our educational programmers. So this is another very important point that comes to mind.

We then finally spoke about how do we take things forward. Several very good suggestions came up and we concluded that reform won't happen unless it evolves as a grass roots activity from within the institutions, from the students, from the faculty, from the vice chancellors and the leaders and that there ought to be a political will and I think we have seen a good demonstration of that fortunately today. Possibly this is perhaps one of the biggest contributions of your report -- that you have encouraged our decision makers to say we got to come to grips with this one so I think that was a very important contribution of this dialogue. We then heard a couple of very fine suggestions about how groups of individuals and a Task Force could be put together consisting of senior level people who can go around the country, meet with universities who would have already studied the report and have made their suggestions ready. The Task Force group would then make a final recommendation to a senior most level of policy makers or wise people on that panel who can help to reach political conclusions and financial conclusions at the highest level. That is the way to go forward and with that thought may I take your permission to say some of us will sit together with the senior policy makers in the universities and in the government in various provinces and in the centre and develop 'Insha Allah' (God willing) a proposal and a mechanism which we will try and get back to those of you who are interested at least through the media and through other means. This was really a very encouraging part of the whole dialogue.

Before concluding I would like very much to thank our presenters today, Henry Rosovsky, David Bloom and also Syed Babar Ali, who were member of this Task Force, for coming to Pakistan, coming to Karachi and giving us your time and your wisdom. I think that was very, very important for us and we are thankful to the panelists for giving us your time. Madam Minister (referring to Minister of Education Professor Ms. Anita Ghulam Ali) you have always been very kind to us in this community and we appreciate that you are one of us and so we like the candor with which you put yourself forward. I wish that example could be more and more followed by others. I wanted to thank also the audience for being such a cooperative audience, the large number of you who not only came for the presentation but stayed for the panel discussions and specially members of the diplomatic corps and some very senior people and journalists around the country who have come here today from the media who have given us the benefit of their support.

I would like in the end to thank a few people at the university who have taken the leadership in putting all this together. I want to thank Dr. Jamsheer Talati in particular for a lot of hard work he put into this. I wanted to acknowledge Robert Baker, our Director General for University Planning, Asif Fancy, our Senior Director for Resource Development and Public Affairs, Amin Jivraj, our Board Secretary and the secretariat of our conference group headed by Major Akhter and all the university support services who in a very short time put this programme together and once again may I on your behalf thank the panelists for their candor, their views and their very valuable suggestions.