Accessible, high quality education that is relevant with regards to the needs of the market is crucial for any developing country’s efforts to achieve sustainable development and prosperity. It ensures that the country becomes competitive in the global marketplace and leads to increased productivity, and a better quality of life. With more than 68 million children under the age of 15 to educate, Pakistan must rise to the challenge and create a sustainable path to a better future for the country and its youth.
Education, especially higher education, offers a great opportunity to Pakistan’s youth to transform their lives into success stories. Thus, universities, colleges and institutions of higher education must expand their resources to provide affordable education and relevant training opportunities. Depending solely on governmental funding and an annual budget is not enough to meet the increasing demands of access, quality and expansion of higher education institutions. It is necessary that sustainable financial mechanisms that exist in perpetuity and increase each year (such as student endowment funds) and training centres that offer support to students wishing to establish their own start-up businesses are placed at each college/university.
Sustainable support Public education, which is the least expensive education option and thus affordable to most Pakistanis is increasingly tasked with a greater number of students, the need for more financial aid to help talented but needy students, and attract and sustain qualified teachers. While governmental funding varies according to government priorities, educational institutions must take immediate steps to alleviate the financial burden of affordable education. Responding to societal needs by delivering quality and relevant education requires an ongoing commitment and therefore, a sustainable financial source. Private education may gather the same benefits from such sustainable financial sources.
Financial independence and stability Additional funding resources to all educational institutions are needed at all times to expand their resources and to offer greater financial assistance to the many talented students that cannot afford to continue their education due to financial constraints. Most donations and scholarship funds are time-limited in duration. In general, they disburse the capital funds dedicated for financing a scholarship within the time frame directed, with little in the way of long-term perspectives.
Endowment funds are radically different. They are created for “perpetuity”, in the sense that only a specific portion, namely, the accrued interest, may be used for the pursuit of the endowment’s goals. In short, an endowment seeks a substantial sum at the outset that forms the equity, and scholarships are paid out from investment gains made from this sum.
These types of perpetual funds provide institutions with financial security and the opportunity to better invest and expand their resources, both human and capital. Donors include alumni, local investors and businessmen, philanthropists, people interested in specific programmes offered at the college or university level or just funds raised periodically for the purpose of supporting higher education. However, it is crucial that the established endowment funds have in place legal rules that allow their administrators to use them specifically for financial aid and programmes that directly benefit the students. These funds may not be used for such expenses as salaries or increase in salaries, fringe benefits or pension benefits for faculty or staff or for their residences.
Student entrepreneurship Education must respond to the current challenges and demands of a society. It must support student entrepreneurship and innovation. Resources, both in the shape of knowledge and seed money, should be available for deserving students to support their ideas in the form of start-up businesses.
Students need to explore their talents, innovate and experiment with new ideas using their own start-ups as a bridge to success even before they finish their academic training. While pursuing higher education, students are ideally positioned to utilise the time to come up with breakthrough ideas that can become very beneficial to them, to educational institutions and to businesses. A student start-up business centre may become a focal point for each higher education institution, allowing the centre to be tailored to the institution’s strengths and needs, but also open to unorthodox ideas and collaborations.
Such centres can help serve as bridges to connect the innovative ideas of students’ start-up initiatives with businesses or “angels” (patrons) that can support them financially. The main goal of the centre is to encourage, promote and support students’ start-ups and facilitate their transition to successful businesses. Ideally, the centre becomes a hub of knowledge that introduces and ultimately links together interests and ideas that would otherwise not happen.
While some students may have business initiatives or experience, many are not exposed to the world of business and lack the knowledge and/or financial means to materialise their ideas and make them marketable or profitable. The student start-up business centre may become the missing link between students’ academic education and real life experience. Students can benefit immensely by doing research, bringing together new ideas and taking calculated risks to bring to life businesses that otherwise would not be possible.
To assist such initiatives, a training workshop for university vice chancellors and heads of higher education institutions on “Establishing Student Advancement Endowment Funds (SAFE) and Start-up Student Business Centres (SSBCs)” was organised by the Promotion of Education in Pakistan (PEP) Foundation Inc., New York, in collaboration with the University of the Punjab on May 5 at the university’s main campus. The goal of the workshop, for which the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan expressed its enthusiastic support, was to expand the capacities of colleges and universities by providing essential information and basic tools to the heads of educational institutions on how to establish student endowment funds, student start-up business centres and raise funds to expand these resources.
The writers work for the Promotion of Education in Pakistan Foundation, Inc., USA.
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