Achieving Academic Excellence AJK's Top Priority: Sardar Masood Khan

Azad Jammu & Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan said strong collaborations and enduring partnerships were needed to be built with international educational institutions for better employ-ability and enhancing entrepreneurship

MIRPUR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 06th Feb, 2018 ) :Azad Jammu & Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan said strong collaborations and enduring partnerships were needed to be built with international educational institutions for better employ-ability and enhancing entrepreneurship.

The president AJK made these remarks at a symposium titled 'Transnational Partnership for Entrepreneurship and Employ-ability' organized by The Millennium University College (TMUC) on Tuesday. The president said Pakistan was on a cusp of an economic revolution and to fully exploit this we need to invest in building a knowledge-based economy in the country.

Current global advancements, he said, had made it more competitive for the younger generation in appropriate job placements. 'This revolution is driven by education, innovation, and research', he said.

President Masood Khan said there was a need for greater symbiosis between academia and industry. He said our academic disciplines had to evolve with the changing job market in order to ensure that our graduates were able to compete with their peers not only nationally but globally.

Highlighting the importance of the Transnational Education (TNE), the president said by providing educational programs from reputed international institutions we would be able to develop local skills, reduce capital outflow, brain drain, and pressure on the local education system.

This, he said, would offer an opportunity for developing competition and hence improving the quality of education and strengthening core capacity and capability of educational institutions.

He said international exposure at the doorstep of the students will help provide them opportunities of self-development leading to excellence and commitment in their academic pursuits.

The president commended the initiatives of the University of Hertfordshire in collaborating with TMUC. He hoped this would also be an encouragement for the university and other international institutions for investing in offshore campuses and shared degree programs in Pakistan and Azad Jammu & Kashmir.

The president said with the formal inclusion of AJK in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor; four major projects had been designated for the state including two hydropower projects, a state of the art industrial zone in Mirpur and an expressway passing through Azad Kashmir connecting it to the main CPEC route.

He said with an educational score of 85%, AJK has surpassed all of the country in retention, learning, enrollment and gender parity. The president AJK said the state had been investing in research-based educational programs at its universities.

He said in the recent months Mirpur University of Science and Technology had teamed up with DICE International Foundation to foster innovation and entrepreneurship through higher education and industrial growth.