News Desk
Lahore: President Dr Arif Alvi has called upon the universities and institutes of higher learning to come up with meaningful and practical linkages with local as well as eminent and credible international universities to benchmark their best practices, learn from their experiences and assume innovation and creativity.
He further stressed upon timely updating curricula, teaching methods and materials to remain abreast with the improvements and developments perpetually taking place in field of education, research, higher learning and development around the globe.
The President Arif Alvi expressed these views during his visit to Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), on Friday. He also chaired a meeting of the LUMS Advisory Board, and met with leadership of LUMS.
During his meeting with the LUMS Advisory Board LUMS, the President stressed the policy and decision-makers, regulatory bodies, and bureaucracy to beat their traditional resistance and inertia for innovation and development and make timely and prompt decisions to ensure speedy and timebound implementation for taking Pakistan to a modern and progressive country.
Arif Alvi for innovations to improve education standards
The President said that continuous innovations and improvements in the IT sector had caused an explosion of knowledge and uninterrupted traffic of information which was available to everyone on their thumbs on smart devices which eliminated the need for memorization and rote learning.
He underlined that universities should enable and motivate their students to work hard to become proficient in their skills, refine new knowledge and skills, and with sound judgment, analytical and critical thinking skills strengthen their niche in the modern-day competitive world.
Arif Alvi urged the university to come up with out-of-the-box solutions comprising a combination of brick-and-mortar, hybrid, and online teaching capabilities to enhance their capacity and reach all those Intermediate passed students in a way that none of these inspiring students for higher education were refused for admission on any pretext or reason.
President Arif Alvi asserted that research carried out by the developed countries, particularly during COVID-19 lockdown has proved that online and hybrid methods of education were successful without compromising the integrity and scope of the education discipline. He added that many universities even in the United States were increasingly offering online courses which has reached 50% of total courses with much lesser expenses.
He advised the universities to impart education to the students by introducing short courses without comprising their quality to make them available for businesses, industries, and services sectors that were anxiously looking for trained and proficient human resources. Arif Alvi urged that the IT sector, recruit employees around the world not only on the basis of their degrees but more so based upon their technical skills and ability to deliver the needed products or services.
President Alvi lamented that due to skewed policies of the past, the country was deprived of quality human resources due to brain drain to greener pastures further depriving the country of their intellect, knowledge and expertise which was deeply required for progress, improvement, and development of the country.
Later, President Alvi was briefed by the LUMS leadership about its strategic priorities, future development plans, issues in country’s higher education sector, and contributions by LUMS in providing quality higher education in the country.
It was informed that LUMS possessed a national footprint and more than 17,000 students from different areas of Pakistan had graduated from the university so far. He was also informed that LUMS planned to enhance the volume of online course content to 25%, and that the university had contributed towards policymaking in Pakistan, especially in the energy sector.
It was stated that the university was actively engaged in support of the government and the industry to focus on the issues of socio-economic development being faced by the country.
The President appreciated LUMS for providing quality higher education and fulfilling the country’s needs for educated and skilled professionals, adding that Pakistan needed more iconic higher education institutions like LUMs.
