Higher education often sees a lot of challenges in Pakistan. The trend in more advanced countries is to divide higher education into two parts. Higher education challenges in Pakistan The first is general education, where people learn to think in depth. The more rigorous, more “generalist” and less applied methodology. The more important thing is that these courses become popular in a society where we do not know what kinds of future jobs will be available?
Higher education challenges in Pakistan
It should be noted that a small portion of higher education in developed countries is focused on the training of technologists through short courses. And often in Pakistan we are promoting traditional courses that do not create technological mindsets. In the second part of Higher Education is that students seek higher level professionalism to enhance their career.
Students want secure future regarding the employment opportunities. If we come to know that our course will support us not only in Pakistan but also in abroad then it would be meaningful course.
How do the countries grow their economy?
In Pakistan, as the professions are hyper-regulated, syllabus is generally “tied up” with a multitude of subjects and required courses. In other words, quantity is privileged over quality. In this item, we are against the most advanced countries. We need to understand that what kinds of skills our industry need? How can we excel in the field of IT? It is very true most of the countries which focus on technical education get perfect economic conditions in their countries.
The more advanced a country is in education the better return of productivity can be seen in that country.
Institutional challenge in Pakistan?
The third challenge is institutional. The legal framework for higher education in Pakistan is based on the idea of a “Research and Extension”. Not all higher education institutions perform these couple of activities, which create an extraordinary cost to comply with the model. Budget is limited and most of the universities are making efforts to fulfil the requirements of their existing staff. So spending an extra budget would be meaningful in the extension of educational setups but the question is how it will be managed?
Management system of public universities
The management system of public universities offers no incentive to be efficient for each of the concerned parties. We have huge entry barriers for foreign teachers, we have not enough sources to give them attractive packages. And we offer very little opportunities to good undergraduate students that’s why the well-educated and the big names in education industry feel hesitation when they are asked to come and teach the youth.
If we want to see higher education level as per the standard of international, then we need to invest our time and allocation of funds must be quick. Often we see the government approves funds for education sector but the real issuance or release of funds take months. If a plan is not implemented at time, then it can lose the effectiveness.
Educational reforms
The right person for the educational reforms must be appointed because we have very limited resources if we keep on testing new persons for this work then we may incur extra costs. We need to lower the burden and bring the real scholars in front of us. In this way higher education challenges can be managed without suffering a lot.
