GCU launches project to develop entrepreneurial culture

LAHORE:A capacity-building project to develop entrepreneurial universities in Pakistan was launched here on Wednesday at the Government College University Lahore under the auspices of its Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP). The three-year project titled TAKE-UP, led by Saarland University Germany, is being funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.

Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Asghar Zaidi chaired the launch ceremony which was also addressed by Punjab Board of Investment and Trade (PBIT) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jahanzeb Burana, Ms Inge Iqbal, Director of German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Dr Cornelius Konig, Professor of Industrial Psychology from Saarland University, Germany and Ms Vasiliki Chronaki, Communications Officer at Athens University of Economics and Business.

Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Asghar Zaidi said that instead of policing students, universities must empower them. He added “training for entrepreneurship is about changing the mindset of our graduates, in which they transform themselves from job seekers to job creators.”

He stressed that Pakistan’s education system should be moving away from an input system to an output-based system. The Vice Chancellor announced that GCU was planning to teach entrepreneurship as an elective subject to the students of all disciplines and it would help them understand needs of the industry.

Prof Zaidi appreciated that under the TAKE-UP project, four local universities (GCU, LUMS, University of Gujrat and COMSATS, had joined hands and formed a partnership with two foreign universities (Saarland University, Germany and Athens University of Economics and Business). He said that the project was aimed at uplifting the potential of Pakistani universities in the area of entrepreneurship, especially the development of entrepreneurial skills in students by improving the coaching process of students with strong entrepreneurial intentions. Dr Cornelius Konig said that the objectives of this three-year project included assessment of entrepreneurial culture, development of strategic action plans and coaching materials, establishing e-learning platforms and publishing best practices. He said that there was not enough mentoring and encouragement for youth to become entrepreneurs in Pakistan. He said that GCU would be involved in the future to train other universities of Pakistan.

seminar: A seminar on “Islam and the Politics of Development” was held here at the Government College University Lahore under the auspices of its Mehboob ul Haq Economic Society (MHES). In his keynote address, Prof Dr Adeel Malik, Globe Fellow in the Economics of Muslim Societies at the University of Oxford, explained how Pakistan’s historically-embedded elites may have undermined the education and long-run development. He argued that the impact of Islam on economic development could be strongly conditioned by history, and expressed through interplay with formal institutional structures. Using insights from an ongoing project on the political economy of shrines in Pakistan, he showed that regions with a greater presence of historically significant Muslim shrines experienced a slow growth of literacy.