The Asian Development Bank (ADB)’s Asia 2050 report identified seven regions of Asia with rapidly growing economies, but Pakistan is not even on the horizon, said Chairman Higher Education Commission (HEC) Dr Javid Laghari on Wednesday.
He was addressing a public talk organised by the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI). The chairman said ADB’s report identified South Korea, Japan, China, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia as the seven fastest growing economies in Asia. He expressed disappointment on the fact that Pakistan was no where to be seen.
While identifying education as directly linked to the socio-economic development of any country, Laghari gave an overview of the key challenges in way of higher education and research. He identified access to higher education, quality and standard of education, faculty and significance of research in various courses as vital factors in building a country’s economy, community and leadership.
He said the education enrollment of Turkey, Malaysia, China, Indonesia and India was ten times more than Pakistan’s. “Since the establishment of the HEC, the number of universities has increased and so has the enrollment in universities. The gross tertiary enrolment (GTE) ratio for Pakistan is five percent as compared to seven percent of Bangladesh and 12 percent of India,” he added.
The chairman further said that South Korea had the highest GTE ratio in Asia at the rate of 95 percent. Pakistan is even below Togo’s rate of 5.2 percent. “Only 20 percent of Pakistani universities offer PhD degrees as compared to 100 percent in India,” he said.
The HEC chairperson said that the higher education institutes had shifted from their traditional role of research and higher education to innovation and entrepreneurship. Now the HEC, he said, was facing new challenges in realising the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship, faculty and curriculum development, professional development, university-industry linkages, market research, regional and global partnership, availability of funding and grant as well as developing a national innovation policy.
Earlier, ISSI Director General Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, in his brief welcome address, highlighted the importance of education in the political development of Pakistan. He said Pakistan needed an educational crusade.
