Producing knowledge-able or knowledge-label
THE access to higher education has increased over the last 20 years and all that is possible with the support of the Government’s priority of investing in the youth for a better and bright future of this country.
The challenges are also there of job provision or consumption of these graduates in the national and international job market.
As the Government has limited job openings, and rest of the job market only considers the best of the best for various positions.
In such a competitive job market, higher education institutions need to work hard for developing their credibility and reputation.
The graduates through Pakistani universities are produced through various modes ie full-time or regular mode which is on-campus students whereas there is another mode through which students only register and appear in the annual examination.
That is an external or private exam mode.Interestingly, students who qualify examination of regular or private mode will get same qualification or degree.
Both will compete for jobs with same type of credentials.The focus of the higher education institutions is mostly on students enrolled through regular mode and all academic and research activities are focused on them.
Although the same University may be producing a large number of external or private students but remain on low priority.
Resultantly, when Universities are assessed for performance in terms of quality of the graduates by any third party or employers then the performance or reputation of the institutions remains poor due to the bad performance of private students in job interviews and tests.
However, a few poor souls who cannot afford the tuition fee, living expenses, and other costs of regular programmes get themselves enrolled in the private or external programs for competing with those who have all resources.
On the other side, the private or external programs are helping the higher education institutions to generate significant funds for their regular operations ie salaries of faculty and staff, etc.The importance of the knowledge economy during this 21st Century is a proven fact.
The exports of engineering goods and software-based products are becoming a bigger slice of the pie.
The conventional exports need to be finished in a standardized way for the international market.
Many companies are selling products with their label without having a single factory or production facility.
It is observed that countries that are producing more PhDs in different disciplines are leading among productive nations because they become a solution provider to the problems being faced by different stakeholders.
They focus on problem hunting exercises and by analyzing the profit and loss approach, entrepreneurship is promoted in higher education institutions.
in Pakistan, universities are producing PhDs in limited numbers in the fields which are in demand.The PhDs that are being produced in large numbers are in the saturated disciplines.
In our system, the institutions and individuals ie experts never take risk of failure in any research work or research project as we don’t promote experimentation in our research and resultantly our research focuses on easy-going and proven methods for research.
The main reason is that the experimentation and exploration approaches are a little bit uncertain, therefore, are not preferred most of the time and are considered a waste of time and resources.
Another major factor of unemployment of PhDs is that they are only considered for teaching, and research at Universities or Research & Development (R&D) Organizations.
Whereas in developed countries, industries and various business organizations they are employed them to improve their products, processes and services for earning more profit.
They become part of these organizations and lead their R&D eco-system, this way they also start contributing to society by arranging various events for potential employees and customers.
For such arrangements, there is a need to have a stronger relationship of universities with industries.
The government may introduce incentives in terms of tax or other relevant services for those industries and businesses which regularly engage students as an intern and offer R&D support.
Such initiatives need to be offered for a specified period.It will enable students to focus on skills they need to improve i.e.
communication skills or technology-related skills.The universities specifically public universities must engage relevant stakeholders in their annual events like project exhibitions etc.
Universities need to showcase student and faculty projects which are relevant to the problems or challenges being faced by the industries by inviting them at universities to interact with faculty and students on a regular basis.
Further, the Higher Education Commission has a limited staff that regularly follows up institutions for improving the quality of higher education.
Since 2002, although Universities in the public and private sectors are increased to accommodate the continuous demand of higher education due to the ban on recruitment of supporting staff and other various reasons, even the budgetary approved positions are not filled to run the operations of the Organization in the desired manner.
HEC needs to be a learning organization for adjusting it according to the ever-changing demands of globalization, internationalization and ICT-based education.
The government is taking many steps for the youth of this country and the same can be implemented in a better manner only if HEC is strengthened and capacity is enhanced with short-term and long-term initiatives.
There is a Chinese proverb “If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.”
—The writer is Deputy Director at Higher Education Commission, Islamabad.
