ISLAMABAD: Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal has urged vice chancellors (VCs) of Pakistan’s engineering universities to reform their curriculum keeping in view challenges, industrial revolution and market demands as from now onwards, universities will be provided funding on the basis of research quality and performance.

According to a press release issued by the Planning Commission on Sunday, the minister made the said remarks while chairing a meeting, which was attended by vice chancellors of the country’s engineering universities, representatives of the engineering industry, Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) and the Institution of Engineers Pakistan (IEP).

The meeting aimed at formulating a comprehensive plan of action to review the curriculum of engineering universities and modernising the teaching methodology, bringing engineering education at par with global competition, and to establish links between the industry and university.

“Today’s world values skilled human resources than mere armchair scientists or degree holders, hence, it is imperative, especially for engineering universities, to equip students with modern day technology and accustom them with technical knowledge and skills,” the minister said.

“We need to break ego-systems and instead create eco-systems of innovation in our universities,” he said and added that a task force after its thorough review and expert level extensive deliberations would give its recommendation and overall implementation strategy to modernise engineering education in Pakistan.

The press release said that the federal government had been funding HEC and other universities for improvement of higher education programmes and upgrading the education and infrastructure of public sector universities despite the acute financial crunch.

In this regard, the ministry has recently approved a project worth Rs650 billion to equip laboratories of engineering universities with state-of-the-art apparatus as well to improvise, it said.

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2023