President Dr Arif Alvi has urged the universities to focus on research and development (R&D) activities to produce quality and skilled manpower for expeditious socio-economic development of the country.

Hiring qualified, committed and professional faculty was of paramount importance for imparting the latest knowledge and for the intellectual development of graduates, he said chairing a follow-up meeting at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML).

He emphasized that universities should adopt innovative and creative techniques to increase the number of students and graduates by adopting hybrid and online teaching methodologies.

He also stressed that all stakeholders in the education sector should further improve their intellectual and psychological skill sets and embrace policies, rules and regulations compatible with the market-driven needs of educational institutions and students. This would meet the exponentially increasing market demand for skilled human resources, especially in the IT sector, he added.

President Alvi said that education was the biggest source of socio-economic development, so it was inevitable to train and educate youth to empower them financially and economically.

He expressed his concern over the brain drain witnessed by the country in the past years. He underscored that efforts should be made to keep the educated youth within the country by providing them equitable opportunities so that they could serve in the socio-economic development.

He emphasized that as per the requirement of the market, the universities should offer two-year associate degree courses or appropriate diploma courses for those sectors where the market needed an immediate inflow of trained and educated human resources, such as the IT sector.

Highlighting the importance of learning international languages, the president said they provided means for enriching insight and wisdom through literature, science and other knowledge produced in those languages.

He appreciated the role of NUML in the promotion of education in the country, especially in learning international languages.

Rector NUML, Major General (Retd) Muhammad Jaffer briefed the president on various initiatives and educational programmes introduced by the university. Currently, NUML is teaching more than 21 national and international languages, he said.

He informed that NUML had over 22,818 students, 77,176 alumnae, 1,384 faculty members and around 915 administrative staff. The university had nine regional campuses in Quetta, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Peshawar and Gwadar besides an international campus in Urumqi, China, he added.

He emphasized the need for regulators to come forward and bring solutions to increase the number of students to meet the growing market demands.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk