President Dr Arif Alvi stressed the need for conducting market oriented research and development activities in the universities and equipping the youth with marketable skills as per the market’s requirements.
President Dr Arif Alvi stressed the need for conducting market oriented research and development activities in the universities and equipping the youth with marketable skills as per the market’s requirements.
He said Pakistan had enormous human resources in the form of its huge youth bulge, which could be turned into an asset by equipping them with in-demand skills and providing them with technical and vocational skills. This, he said, would help enhance national productivity and efficiency besides providing gainful employment to its youth.
President Alvi expressed these views while speaking at the convocation ceremony of the National University of Technology (NUTECH) in Islamabad. Rector NUTECH retired Lt-Gen Moazzam Ijaz, members of the faculty, the graduating students and their parents attended the ceremony.
Speaking at the ceremony, the president said that with the advancements in technology, modes of learning were also changing and now a great volume of information and knowledge was readily available on online platforms.
Dr Alvi underscored the need to increase the number of graduates, particularly in the fields of IT, Cyber Security, Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, by imparting education through distance, online and hybrid modes of education.
He said that virtual and hybrid modes of education had resulted in reduced tuition fee and training durations in many US-based universities, adding that Pakistan already possessed the necessary infrastructure to promote virtual and hybrid learning. He said that the virtual modes of learning as adopted by the Virtual University of Pakistan could be replicated in other varsities to increase the number of graduates while also maintaining quality.
President Alvi regretted that Pakistan had to face the phenomenon of brain drain as its talented and qualified people could not be absorbed in its system and institutions and they had to leave to earn livelihoods abroad, but market oriented research will empower them to face these challenges. He said Pakistan had invested greatly in the training and education of university graduates, but due to systemic inefficiencies it had to suffer this loss.
Dr Alvi highlighted the need for female graduates to be part of the economic cycle, adding that women’s talents should be fully utilised for the country’s socio-economic development. He regretted that 40-50 per cent of female graduates in the field of medicine dropped out of the workforce due to social and family constraints, leading to a drop in overall national productivity.
Rector Moazzam Ijaz highlighted the role of NUTECH in the promotion of market-oriented education, particularly in Engineering and Computer Science disciplines.
Earlier, the president awarded gold medals to the top-performing students in various disciplines of engineering and conferred degrees on the graduates.
Originally published at Dawn