Ahsan Stresses Universities’ Role In National Development As ‘hotbeds’ Of Innovation

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Nov, 2024) Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Professor Ahsan Iqbal on Thursday highlighted the importance of quickly catching up with the pace of the digitalization revolution taking place worldwide to achieve the national goals of progress and prosperity.

“Our universities must become hotbeds of innovation so that the investments made so far in this sector can be materialized on a durable basis,” he said while addressing a ceremony to launch the Pak-UK Education Gateway Phase-II.

He emphasized that the future of nations would now be determined in the libraries and laboratories of top universities where high-quality research was conducted to produce patents, rather than through conventional methods on battlefields. “How fast and what quality of innovation any country produces will decide its future,” he added.

The minister said today, Pakistan has thousands of Ph.Ds in the fields of science, technology, and engineering, thanks to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) initiative, the "Teachers Researchers Overseas Scholarship Scheme," which was launched in 1998 under Vision-2010.

At that time, the number of Ph.D. holders in the S&T field was only around 350.

He explained that under the scheme, the government had offered 5,000 overseas and indigenous scholarships to brilliant students, resulting in a significant increase in human resource development, particularly in the S&T and engineering sectors.

The minister emphasized the need for the effective utilization of these capabilities to find solutions to the country’s challenges, urging the engagement of these experts in university laboratories.

He cited examples of developed nations, including the United States, Britain and European countries, which have relied on addressing both corporate and national issues through research in university laboratories under the guidance of professors.

Ahsan Iqbal mentioned that the country faced numerous challenges related to agriculture, health and climate change, and that universities should regularly generate ideas from their labs to address these issues effectively. He further advocated for an education system that focused on imparting life success skills to students, rather than merely following traditional textbook-based learning.