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Engineering university with French collaboration
KARACHI, 22 Jan(The News): Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Saturday that a world-class
engineering university being set up in collaboration with the French government
will start working by September this year.
Speaking at a ceremony held
at the Sindh Governor's House in connection with the foundation stone-laying of
west wing block of Institute of Business & Technology (BIZTEK), he said the
university is being set up on 150 acres land of the Pakistan Marine Academy,
which has only 50 students. He said the engineering university will have a total
enrolment of 5,000 students.
The prime minister said our educational
system has a generalist orientation and needs to gravitate towards vocational
training to equip our students with technical and managerial skills. This will
help create necessary linkages between educational attainment and the job
market, he emphasised.
Our government, Shaukat Aziz said, is deeply
committed to promote the cause of education and our strategy aims at improving
the access to and quality of education as well as overcoming gender, rural-urban
and regional imbalances.
"We are paying particular attention to
governance and management aspects of education, particularly by involving
communities," Shaukat said.
He said Pakistan, though a late starter in
the field of higher education, has made significant strides in the last seven
years. The thrust of our strategy is to improve the quality and access to higher
education, particularly science and technology that directly contribute to
economic development, the prime minister pointed out.
He said the
existing universities are being strengthened by providing qualified faculty,
investing in research and development and forging linkages with industry.
Pointing out that today Pakistan has not a single world-class university or a
university among top in the world, the prime minister said our government has
embarked upon an ambitious plan of establishing nine world class universities in
collaboration with the highly advanced countries such as Germany, Sweden,
France, Austria, Japan, South Korea and Italy to name a few.
The prime
minister while referring to expansion in physical facilities of the institute,
pointed out that the expansion shows the programme, programme leads to
development, development to prosperity and prosperity leads to peace. He said if
these are achieved in life than Pakistan would clearly reach its true potential.
He emphasised on making investment in knowledge and it is what the
present government is endeavouring in Pakistan. We are investing in education to
transform our country into a Pakistan of tomorrow, Shaukat said. The prime
minister said the Muslim Ummah has a lot of money in reserve, generated from
oil, which must be invested in knowledge.
In the field of higher
education in Pakistan, he said the government has tried to bring in private and
public sectors at a level, which will meet the test of time and enable our
people to be competitive.
He referred to shortage of trained drivers and
hotel workers in the Middle East and other countries and said we can meet these
demands by focussing on relevant education and training. He said today he gave a
challenge to director IBA to raise his institute and bring it among the top ten
business schools of Asia and the world.
The prime minister reiterated
that Pakistan does not have even one university among the top ones in the world
or even among top ten in Asia. Despite that Pakistan has produced superb people
who competed in the world. He said Pakistan needs quality education.
In
Pakistan, the prime minister said, Dr Atta-ur-Rehman was encouraged to publish
the ranking of universities, so that the people may know which one is good and
which is not and this has created a lot of excitement among the people -
excitement because good universities will standout, parents and students will
know they are going to the right place. He said this will be transparent and the
list will be published every year after a survey. There will be no discretion in
this regard, so that they may become comparative.
Shaukat Aziz said that
reforms are taking place in the education system in four to five key areas.
Speaking about the reforms being introduced in the higher education, he referred
to sending quite a good number of students for PhD and Masters in best
universities of the world and said on return, they will be a valuable human
capital.
Earlier, Chancellor of BIZTEK Institute of Business and
Technology Noman Lakhani highlighted the present and future programmes of the
institute, while Vice-Chairman of the board of governors Col Tahir Husain
presented the welcome address.
The ceremony was attended among others by
Sindh Governor Dr Ishrat-ul-Ebad Khan, Federal Minister Babar Khan Ghauri,
Provincial Ministers Adil Siddiqui and Iftikhar Ahmed, besides advisers,
industrialists, businessmen, intellectuals and academicians.
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| Education News | | Updated: 09 Feb, 2012 |
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