'50,000 jobless engineers expose disconnect between academia and industry'.

KARACHI -- Speakers at an engineering symposium held on Saturday highlighted the many challenges being faced by the industry and suggested that universities should embrace innovation and entrepreneurship in education at a faster pace so that graduates may be able to transform customer needs into products and services.

They also shared that more than 50,000 engineers were jobless in the country due to gap in supply and demand while many engineers with doctorate degrees were working in academia only.

Titled 'The Future of Engineering in Pakistan', the 15th symposium of Pakistan Academy of Engineering (PAE) was organised at a local hotel.

In his welcome address, PAE president Engineer Jameel Ahmad Khan emphasised the critical importance of engineering profession globally and nationally.

'The contribution of engineering alone to the Gross Domestic Product amounts to 30 to 40 per cent in developed countries. In this era of data analytics, it is unfortunate that there is an acute dearth of reliable data in Pakistan due to which analysis and planning is based on guesstimates only,' he said.

To be competitive, he pointed out, there was a need to prepare precise profile of future engineers in order to utilise engineering manpower efficiently.

He suggested that Pakistan may replicate the Chinese 'Thousand Talent Programme' to bring key personnel back home as part of measures to enrich its engineering environment.

He also emphasised that universities should also train engineers in soft skills like communication, negotiation, team management and problem solving.

'Corporate slaves'

Dr Shahid Qureshi, Programme Director at the Centre for Entrepreneurial Development at the...