- Striving hard by creating wealth of opportunities in the neglected areas to contribute better for Pakistan
- Opens nationwide campaign to create ‘blue economy’ awareness; bridging academia-industrial linkage
The university’s place as a paramount player in a global system increasingly driven by knowledge, information and ideas. We live in a time when knowledge is ever more vital to our societies and economies, in a world of rapidly circulating capital and people have revolutionary communication technologies. Knowledge is replacing other resources as the main driver of economic growth, and education becomes the foundation for individual prosperity and social mobility. Universities play an important role as leaders in teaching, learning and in research and technology. In teaching activities, universities provide the professional training for high-level jobs, as well as the education necessary for the development of the personality and society needed to meet the challenges of sustainable development in a community, in raising public awareness, in developing new cultural values by training and socializing people of new social era bringing out economic, political, social and cultural transformation providing preconditions for informed decision-making, responsible behavior and consumer choice.
As universities are cast in increasingly intense competition for students, their cultural and civic role has become ever more important. Now, universities need to prove that they do more than just teach students to pass their degree courses so, creating a wealth of graduates with skills, leadership abilities along with the good social being is one of the most important contributions expected by the society from any university but as the times passes with so much emphasis on natural sciences, social sciences can sometimes appear to take a back seat instead of the fact that social sciences touch all our lives in so many different ways, and ought to be much more centre stage in terms of national policy making as it study the impact of change of migration, looking at issues of debt and poverty, trying to improve housing, developing new ways of supporting families who are facing multiple disadvantages and working with voluntary organizations and charities involved in delivering public services etc but nowadays education is only measured as an instrument of economic growth by neglecting the importance of developing such capacities. It misses the fact that we are all interpreters and ignores that something is not about ‘facts’ only but about understanding and meaning. Humanities and social and political sciences have much to offer in providing powerful insights for promoting development.
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Social sciences neglect leads to narrow development
Many social scientists believe their achievements are undervalued, especially when compared with the work of those in science, technology, engineering even “whoever wins the election announce that it’s clear that investment in science should be a priority” but I hope that the social sciences/humanities can continue to have a major role and pressing challenges of the next decade and it is evident that expertise and insight of social scientists in collaboration with the colleagues from the natural sciences, technology and engineering are necessary for the harmonized growth as the social scientist have a critical role to play in addressing the big problems that will confront the country over the next decade.
In this alarming situation very few higher education organization like Bahria University realizes that the ideal and breadth of education lies in embracing humanities, arts, social sciences, technology, management sciences , natural sciences, marine sciences. Bahria University has the core philosophy that ‘Education’ irrespective of the discipline have the ability to produce good citizens along with any of their specialized degree and try to focus the neglected areas of our society like humanities/social sciences and marine in terms of ‘blue economy’ not only to strengthen these sectors but also to explore the wealth of opportunities for Pakistan, to make them more practical and useful citizen striving hard by not only teaching but also through close relationship with industry and try to incorporate the suggestions of corporate world in the curriculum so that curriculum becomes more effective in real world.
Bahria University aims to generate thoughts and actions towards investigating various opportunities, ways of cashing the benefits as well as identifying challenges and ways of overcoming them by raising awareness. Bahria University Karachi by identifying the potential of ‘blue economy’ runs a nationwide campaign to create awareness on the subject and trying to make a strong bridge of academia-industrial linkage to promote education by offering some special degree programs by incorporating the new flavors in the existing traditional degree/ diploma programs like BS (Economics and Finance), BS (Maritime Business and Management), Chinese Language etc necessary for the upcoming harmonized social and economic well being of Pakistan .
[box type=”note” align=”” class=”” width=””](The writer is a Faculty H&SS Department, Bahria University, Karachi)[/box]