Future of higher education in Pakistan.

Byline: Arooj Asghar

Quality improvement and the growth of science and technology based education should be the main focus of attention

Pakistan faces a variety of challenges in reforming its education sector whereas a lack of capacity in the higher education segment is one of the main reasons for the poor standard of higher education in Pakistan. Pakistan's higher education system is relatively small in size as a contrast to its requirement. As a matter of fact, higher education is considered a very significant area for any country's socio, political and economic development. Throughout history, universities have played a very important role in generating and disseminating knowledge, much to the benefit of human beings and human civilizations.

Higher education in Pakistan is making efforts in responding to the challenges of globalization in a local way. The policies of various federal and provincial governments have resulted in mushroom growth of new universities that are mainly concentrated in larger cities of Pakistan. Practically speaking, public universities should be allowed to open profitable part-time or evening programs to meet the growing demands of the students. The positive side of these developments is that it could control the outflow of the capital to the foreign countries by the parents. But the developments have also opened up a host of issues and challenges for Pakistan. There are a rapid deterioration of the standard of education and an absence of strong quality education.

Measures for professional development of education

Pakistan must identify the challenges in the area of higher education and should take some policy measures. The policies should include vision and target setting, training and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) arrangements for the teachers to enhance their skills, new teaching and learning techniques, developing strong quality assurance mechanisms and the like.

In a recent report, a leading European magazine observed that education quality is low in universities in South Asia and mentioned two types of skills shortages: (a) not enough graduates in specialized skills needed within high growth sectors, and (b) where graduates have these skills, they are still unemployed because English language, computer, communication, and problem-solving abilities are absent.

Pakistan needs to transform its classroom techniques as quality education has become a major issue in universities. World-class...