President Dr Arif Alvi on Thursday said that shifting the universities from physical to online education system, setting up university advisory boards with members from industry, agriculture and services sectors was essential for speedy progress and development of the country.
The president, during a follow-up briefing on International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI), at Aiwan-e-Sadr, urged the universities to offer short-term online and hybrid courses to exponentially increase the supply of human resource equipped with marketable skills.
Rector of IIUI, Professor Dr Masoom Yasinzai, and senior officials of the University attended the meeting.
This, he said, would help them to continuously improve upon their curricula and to undertake focused research and development activities for helping the private sector align with current and future market-driven needs. It would also help meet the
-changing customers’ needs and demands, and competing in the regional and international markets in terms of quality and cost-effectiveness of our products and services.
The president said that the public sector universities should change their behaviour from a secured job attitude to pro-active. They should also endeavour to continuously improve their skills and knowledge base and carry out market-driven research and development in coordination with private sector industry leaders.
He further emphasized that universities, in addition to four-year degree courses and PhD programmes, should also offer short skill-based degrees and diploma programs framed and modulated in coordination and input from the Chambers of Commerce and Industry and industry leaders to increase the supply of skilled and educated human resources to speedily narrow the supply and demand gap.
He said that Pakistani universities should benchmark the best online practices of the universities from the developed world and emulate and adopt these best practices for transforming the education systems to remain competitive and relevant.
The president said that Higher Education Commission (HEC) should continuously review its Online and Distance Learning policy and take concrete and time-bound actions to encourage the universities to shift to the online mode of education.
He also advised HEC to proactively market its 24,000 courses of discounted Coursera Programs to institutions under its purview for their faculty members and students in a time-bound manner.
President Alvi said that Allama Iqbal Open University and the Virtual University of Pakistan should further improve their curriculum and processes, and offer their academic and learning products to those countries where the online and virtual education system was either in infancy or didn’t exist, especially the Islamic countries.
