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Pakistan is going through a massive crisis, namely of population explosion. Currently, the country stands at around 210 million people, but the numbers are expected to grow to approximately 350 million or more by the mid of this century, an alarming figure. Pakistani elites, institutions, and past governments have completely failed in curbing population growth. Different pillars of society must come together and start taking steps on a war footing for reducing population growth and educating the masses about contraception and the benefits of small families.
But what to do with an already existing – and ever-growing – mass of the population? Such a huge number of people will need ecological resources to survive and modern education and skills to remain relevant to the modern economy. Pakistan should actively develop a strategy to train and consume its young workforce within the local economy. However, it seems impossible that almost everyone can get a job in the local job market. A partial solution can be the export of highly trained workforce abroad.
Pakistan should actively develop a strategy to train and consume its young workforce within the local economy.
The country already exports skilled and unskilled labour to Gulf and South East Asian countries, but they never get citizenship of these countries, get little to no human rights and are prone to exploitation by unscrupulous employers. Maybe it’s about time the elites of the country decided that we need to significantly improve the skill and knowledge level of our workers and make them capable of getting jobs in more advanced economies of West, East Asia, and some countries of Latin America.
Broadly speaking, the skills and qualifications in modern economies can be categorized into two sets, academic and vocational. It is the job of universities to impart academic skills and to do research. Vocational skills are learned at technical training institutes. For creating high-end human capital both kinds of institutes are necessary. For creating more valuable human capital it will be the universities which have to lead the way.
Majors taught by universities can be categorized as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and Non-STEM. For foreign workforce and immigrants, Non-STEM majors have very less demand in developed economies. Locals can easily fill job positions requiring ‘soft subjects’ credentials. So, STEM majors should be the major focus of skilled manpower export for Pakistan’s planners. In general, STEM subjects can be divided into three kinds of categories. The abstraction or difficulty level of subjects increases from type C to A, but job availability decreases.
Category A: Pure Mathematics, Theoretical Physics/Chemistry/Biology, Theoretical Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Theoretical Linguistics, Cybernetics
Category B: Engineering Sciences, Material Sciences, Applied Mathematics & Statistics, Applied Physics/Chemistry, Applied Computer Science, Bio-Informatics, Machine Learning, Medical Research
Category C: Electrical/Mechanical/Mechatronics/Software Engineering, IT, Business Informatics, Data Analytics, Accounting, Medicine, Agriculture Sciences
Category A subjects are the holy grail of academic research and are more fundamental and research intensive in nature. Pure mathematics and theoretical physics are the stars of this category. These are very rigorous and academically prestigious subjects to study and graduates of these are required to do Ph.D. and Post-Docs for advancement in their careers. The major goals of these areas are to increase human understanding of different kinds of natural and mathematical phenomena and to do theoretical research in other areas. This is where the creation of new kinds of scientific knowledge happens. However, only a few jobs in the industry and government sectors exist for such specializations (unless one branch out towards the more applied side), few bright people get permanent jobs in academia or in research centres.
Category B is basically a mix of both categories A and C. In the bigger Western industrial groups, specialized high-tech SMEs and applied research centres these specializations are used in high-end research for applied goals, such as building innovative materials for industrial use, mathematically model engineering problems or finding a cure for diseases. Knowledge creation in these areas has more practical and short-term applications. Usually one has to have a Ph.D. degree in order to find work in such applied research areas. It will not be an exaggeration to say that both category A and B are not the points of strength of Pakistani universities, as both are quite abstract to master. Sadly, these two categories seem out of the league of our professors and university graduates, for now.
Category C subjects are used for the development of technical products, different kinds of commodity production and the creation of information services and software applications. It is this category Pakistani universities should focus on for manpower export. Industries of different kinds, govt. sectors and SMEs in the West usually require graduates of these majors who can do hands-on technical work. Pakistani graduates need to focus on these subjects which are mostly application oriented in nature and are not very abstract to grasp. A quick search on Google and different job search engines will show that there are tons of such jobs in the developed economies, and even in the developing countries. A basic bachelors or masters degree, combined with marketable technical skills and relevant work experience, will be all that is required for such jobs, has much more economic value and will help the graduates to develop the local economy or to leave the country altogether for greener pastures. Such knowledge workers can always come back to the home country with advanced knowledge and experience and train the next generation of graduates and open up innovative businesses.
Imran Khan’s government should strive to do agreements with different foreign governments for skilled manpower supply.
Currently, Pakistani universities lack competencies in both research and teaching quality. High tech (or even basic level) R&D is not the foray of Pakistani universities, they only specialize in producing junk papers and research. HEC’s drive to focus on increasing the rankings of universities by relying on the research of dubious quality has damaged the teaching quality and has put the future of students at stake. Anyone who has any iota of an idea of what goes on at major institutions of higher learning of the country will know very well that they are not doing their intended tasks properly. Pakistani universities are plagued with problems of plagiarism, nepotism, ethnic strife, mismanagement, and financial corruption. Change is not possible without fundamental alteration in thinking habits and cultural traits. In the future, more focus should be done on teaching quality and hiring of competent lecturers who are passionate to teach about their domain areas.
In the short term, and for the economic future of their hapless graduates, universities must complement degrees with skills-based short courses which have to employ state of the art software and teaching methods. Coordination with local industry and multinational companies should be established in order to know more about their skill demands. That skill demand can be fulfilled by partnering with local industries and government departments by the creation of training courses in relevant areas. International research internships and sponsored thesis research at different multinationals abroad should be arranged for more promising graduates. All of these initiatives will make our graduates more aware of work opportunities available abroad in high skill areas.
The developed world is aging fast and will need qualified and competent knowledge workers in coming years. There are tons of mid-level engineering, IT and applied science jobs to be filled in the coming decades. Pakistan has a youth bulge in its demographics and with the right strategy, it can be turned into an advantage. If we can educate and train even a few thousand graduates a year who can do technical jobs abroad then it will be some success. Imran Khan’s government should strive to do agreements with different foreign governments for skilled manpower supply. Other developing countries like Turkey, Thailand, and India have already made these kinds of arrangements, there is no reason why Pakistan cannot join their ranks.
Hassan Mirza
The writer is working as an applied scientist in Germany and specialises in Computer Simulations, Applied Artificial Intelligence, and Energy Modelling. In his free time he reads extensively in multiple languages (Urdu, English and German) and is interested in writing about scientific and socio-economic issues.
