Learning from Africa

With a lack of an essential educational framework and a government unwilling to invest in research, it is challenging for the Pakistani scholars and students to compete in the global market. One option is to develop cooperation between scholars from various institutions.

The Ethiopian government is an excellent example of a government prioritising higher education and making it more relevant to the local needs. For instance, it has quickly expanded its higher education system in recent years and implemented a strategy to shift the 70:30 topic balance in all the public institutions away from the humanities and towards science and technology. Jimma University is a huge success story. Since its inception in 2013, the department of materials science and engineering has quickly grown to become one of the leading research schools in the Sub-Saharan region.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) and online universities’ like Singularity University and Minerva are revolutionising learning.

Delivering emerging technical education can be more expensive than business management, social and natural sciences, leading cash-strapped public education institutions and cost-conscious private universities to limit their development in this area. This has resulted in higher education institutions weighted towards theory rather than imparting soft and technical skills, which Pakistani graduates desperately need.

Pakistan has an opportunity to think deeply about providing quality education online and figuring out how to make it less expensive and more interactive.

Technology and science can deliver on their promise and potential if we envision increased cooperation across disciplines. Can social scientists work in research teams with natural scientists and engineers? The Ebola epidemic is simply the most recent and attention-grabbing example of what occurs when the social components are overlooked.

Invest in quality

A high-quality programme would include a curriculum that is evaluated and updated in collaboration with the industry. Learning objectives should be reexamined and enhanced according to the economy’s human capital requirements in our connected world.

Pakistani academics must perform on an international stage, while demonstrating how their work contributes to the local needs. When the former push for publishing in high-impact journals, it is often in conflict with the methods of conveying research that benefit the latter. Quality is often defined in the north, which has an enormous influence on higher education institutions in the south. The process by which the quality is judged (through journal rankings and associated measures) is a restricted measure. Pakistani scholars need to focus on the country’s existential concerns, ranging from climate change to human rights to scientific and technological revolutions. The objective should be to create robust local knowledge production outlets and increase partnerships among regional scholars, the Pakistani academic diaspora and other foreign peers.

Ensuring the relevance of training is vital to developing skills that allow university graduates to obtain well-paid, highly skilled jobs. This is where relationships between universities, the local and international private sectors and politicians become critical to promote knowledge creation and distribution.

Our professors and policymakers should avoid copy-and-paste approaches from the West. Harvard, MIT, Oxford, and many other colleges are battling to stay relevant in the face of an increasing number of online courses and universities. In reality, schools are surviving thanks to an infusion of international students from Asia, Africa and other regions of the globe. So, should Pakistan keep doing what elite colleges in the West do, or should we take a different approach?

Collaboration with the business sector

As the primary source of job creation, the private sector may assist institutions in equipping the country’s young with workplace skills. Businesses, for example, should collaborate with the local institutions to provide a high-quality STEM curriculum. Industry experts should assist overburdened faculty in designing and delivering courses that provide students with comprehensive real job skills.

Pakistani universities have access to a large number of the most recent journals and books, which might do a lot to enhance the quality of education, but they are seldom utilised. It would make a difference if reading lists were updated and professors urged their students to use them. We need to persuade the Pakistan government that investing in higher education helps the nation achieve middle-income status quicker, a common goal.

In only 50 years, South Korea went from an aid receiver to a giving nation thanks to the tremendous economic development and wealth.

Having incubation centres at each institution where students participate in projects relevant to their “world of work” can foster innovation. It can also reduce the number of unskilled and unemployable graduates a university produces. However, this requires public and private higher education institutions’ leadership.

Higher Education Commission (HEC) states that it ‘supports’ the idea of business incubation centres. The following list is on HEC’s website for the universities interested in establishing BIC: “BICs will be established at leading public sector HEI, where there is an established and fully functional ORIC.”

“Private Sector HEIs can also take benefits associated with the BIC programme by forming a consortium of universities for the establishment of BIC (preferably 3-4 HEIs).”

“Interested HEIs will formally apply to HEC for the establishment of BIC and after evaluation of shown interest, the application for establishment of BIC will be approved with a limited time period funding (maximum two years) covering the operational expenses in 60:40 sharing ratio.”

However, the list of universities in Pakistan with a ‘BIC’ on HEC’s website does not include a single private institute. It isn’t very reassuring that Success Stories and Future Startups page has been saying; “To be updated soon…”

I have been refreshing my browser for over a year, hoping for the result.

(The writer is the CEO of Iqra University Extension)