Alvi wants linkages between local, int’l universities

LAHORE: President Dr Arif Alvi has called upon universities and institutes of higher learning to create meaningful and practical linkages with local and international universities to benchmark their best practices.

He gave this advice during a visit to the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums) on Friday. He chaired a meeting of the Lums Advisory Board. Pro-Chancellor Lums Abdul Razak Dawood, Rector Shahid Hussain, VC Dr Arshad Ahmad, members of the Board of Trustees of Lums and senior leadership of the university attended the meeting. The president urged policy and decision-makers, regulatory bodies and bureaucracy to overcome their traditional resistance and inertia against innovation and development and make quick and timely decisions and ensure speedy implementation to help Pakistan become a modern and progressive country. He advised the university to continuously scan the international educational horizon to identify emerging technologies developed and employed around the world and link them with their curricula to create quality graduates equipped with markable skills.

He said innovations and improvements in the ICT sector had caused an explosion of knowledge and abundance of information which was available to everyone with the touch of a button on smart devices which eliminated the need for memorization and rote learning. He underscored that universities should enable their students to work hard to become proficient in their skills and create new knowledge and skills. He urged the universities to employ out-of-the-box solutions including combination of brick and mortar and hybrid and online teaching capabilities to increase their capacity and reach all those FSC-passed students in such a manner that none of them was refused admission on any pretext.