Pakistan's Economy. Perspectives and Foresights for the Future.

[AhsanAmin]

I started this interesting thread two days ago unfortunately it got deleted due to cyberattack on defence.pk. I would request @Horus or @WebMaster to restore the intermediate posts if they can. It is difficult to retrieve browsing from the chrome but many other browsers easily show the history and content in offline mode. If some other PDF friend can email it to moderators or me at anan2999@yahoo.com, I will be thankful. I was able to retrieve the first post from google's cache.

Here is the first post.

we cannot compete with other foreign nations in any field if we do not have a fast growing economy in Pakistan. India is a larger and faster growing country and they are continuously advancing their technological base mostly by doing domestic research inside India. This cannot be more emphasized that a country that produces and exports conventional goods can never compete with any other country that has a technologically advanced economy. Conventional merchandise is sold international markets at nominal profits while technologically innovative products are sold at ten times their production cost. This is why revenues of large technology companies in west rival the entire GDP of our nations that rely on conventional industries of the past. We can continue to export textiles forever but it will never be able to plug the gap between imports and exports. Ever wonder why our exports are stagnant with only minuscule increase every year since we have never been able to change our strategy to rely on same conventional goods sectors for past few decades. If the same state of affairs continue, our economy will continue to lag far behind fast growing economies of other countries in the region and it will be impossible to continue to spend enough on defence to compete with India.

Let us make an observation how several countries around the world succeeded in lifting their economies from failure to great success. I will also give a rough synopsis of emerging technologies timeline across the world. In last century, seventies and eighties was an era of automobile technology. Eighties also saw a great rise in electronics manufacturing. Nineties was an era of computers and related large scale semiconductor manufacturing. Late nineties saw a rise in internet and many internet services providers became hugely successful. Late nineties and twenty first century saw the rise of software industries and related tools and automation technologies. We later saw the emergence of social media related technologies. Every country that grew extremely fast at her peak capitalized on some of these emerging technologies and was among the leaders in the related industries when the technology took off. Japanese accumulated wealth in seventies and eighties by capitalizing on large scale, and state of the art vehicles manufacturing and later they continued to excel in consumer electronics exports. Taiwanese also excelled in VLSI chip manufacturing and micro-computer cloning in late eighties and early nineties and made great fortune. Some other countries like Korea were never the leaders in any of these technologies but continued to steadily learn them and integrate them in their industries and economy. People of Singapore were also ahead in computer parts and chip manufacturing among many other things. Indians capitalized on a large extent on software related technologies when there was a boom in this area and this helped them change their destiny to some extent. Though there was some activity in software exports in Pakistan but just a few medium/small sized software companies dominated the scene with little exports.

We, as a country, have to understand that textiles and garments exports and other related industries of the past are never going to take us anywhere (I really do not mean we should stop doing good work and research in these areas.) We have to learn how to introduce new technologies in our country and integrate them in our industries and make them a crucial part of our economy. This cannot be done by simply giving people tax incentives as is the current practice of our government. We have to work out every aspect of the problem very carefully. First we have to make a list of all prevalent and emerging technologies. We have to create universities where all of these fields will be taught very carefully. Our universities produce engineer-technicians that are great in putting things together and keep systems and machinery running. Very few of them can work with design and manufacturing of latest technological devices in the areas they have studied since there is little practical education in these areas. We have to design a great scientific curriculum, employ better teaching techniques, and promote applied research in our universities. State has to invest heavily in promoting these skills and build a large knowledge base and human capital in the areas of interest in technology and sciences. There has to be a very thorough and well thought out planning effort by the government to promote technology based professions, skills and industries in our country. It is difficult but it is hundred percent possible.

I must warn patriotic Pakistanis that if we fail in introducing new technologies in our country on a large scale, we will never be able to become a successful nation and our government really has to show great wisdom in planning how to introduce these skills in our country as this is the only key to our success as a nation. I will also say that India is far ahead of us in slowly but continuously adopting new sciences and technologies. We wish them well but we would like our country to not lag behind any other country in becoming a leader in new sciences and technologies.

Source: https://defence.pk/threads/what-can-...istani-journalist.427601/page-3#ixzz45KibdQfL

 

[AhsanAmin]

Here is the last post but it would be more interesting in the context of previous discussion if it could be restored.\

Advanced Applied technologies are basically acquired through innovative and applied scientific research and this research is done almost always through computing tools by scientists and engineers who have good computational and anlytical skills in addition to thorough knowledge of their respective scientific disciplines. People might have enough scientific knowledge but it would be almost impossible for them to convert their scientific knowledge into applied research and useful technologies without having great computational skills. Almost all scientific disciplines require some kind of advanced simulation, modelling of deterministic or stochastic physical phenomenon and other computational techniques in order to do advanced research and create new technologies. This holds true for advanced electronics and electrical engineering, VLSI circuit design and fabrication, biomedical engineering, genetic engineering, cutting edge manufacturing technologies, advanced automation of industrial processes, advanced civil engineering, advanced chemical engineering, robotics, design of composite materials, nanotechnologies and defence related industries. Therefore it is paramount that all scientists and engineers have very advanced computing and modelling skills to convert their subject knowledge into applied research in order to create modern innovative technologies. I have cited technologically advanced professions but even in conventional industries, new technologies depend on intelligent and innovative use of computing and modelling techniques related to their respective professions.

We have to realize that there are serious problems in the way sciences and engineering are taught in Pakistan at high school level and these problems continue when students join Pakistani universities. Good Science education must fulfill two conditions. First is natural that students must clearly understand the subject logically in terms of 'cause and effect' and comprehend the concepts behind scientific principles. This part can be labelled as good understanding of sciences. Many good schools and universities do reasonably well on this first part of good education. The second important principle of good science and technology education is that students get to apply the scientific knowledge they learn and work out by themselves, aided with careful teacher guidance, how sciences are applied in reality. This has to be done by introducing a very basic computing and scientific modelling class in high school where students apply the knowledge they have recently learned and write computer programs to see how various things they recently learned in various science subjects interact with each other through scientific principles. This class can be made extremely creative and very innovative for intelligent students.

This cannot be more emphasized that when students learn how to apply their scientific knowledge at an early stage in high school, many of them would become extremely talented and gifted to convert their scientific learning into applications of technology as they go into university and later into a practical research career. Currently this is one of the major hurdles in growth of technology and innovation that even most professors, with a few exceptions, in many good universities in scientific disciplines are not very comfortable in practical applications of their scientific knowledge since they never had the student experience of being a part of intensive computing settings at university or high school level. Scientific learning and the ability to turn this learning into practical applications must go hand in hand and high school is the right place where we should start introducing young students to create practical applications of their scientific knowledge. When young students get to exercise their nascent scientific knowledge into small but applied computing applications, they become truly passionate about learning sciences, technological disciplines and engineering with a great enthusiasm.

Later in the universities, undergraduate students in sciences, engineering and mathematics must enroll in coordinated computing classes every semester where they are introduced to state of the art techniques to scientifically model various phenomenon in their respective and other related scientific disciplines through appropriate computing techniques. Traditionally in Pakistan, even when these scientists and engineers learn their subject material well, they still cannot creatively implement their knowledge in most applied settings. Most universities teach computing to undergraduate students but the current level of activity is absolutely very little and not enough as compared to what has to be done very carefully in a well planned and well coordinated setting. Really if a university graduate has good knowledge and understanding of his scientific or engineering discipline but still cannot apply this knowledge in new creative settings to novel research problems using computing, modelling and simulation techniques of his/her related scientific discipline, he will never be able to make full use of his knowledge and his potential would always remain unrealized and if most scholars and graduates suffer from this problem, the future of their nation would greatly suffer as a whole.

In order to do this, we will have to introduce new curriculum for sciences, design the coordinated syllabus of computing classes so as to remain in sync with what sciences and maths students have learnt in other subjects that could be applied in computing classes, and also train a lot of very bright young teachers to teach the computing classes. Similarly bright professors would have to be hired and trained to teach the scientific and technological computing classes in the universities where they guide their students how to creatively apply their knowledge in order to convert it into novel applications of advanced sciences and technology.

 

[touela]

my reply to your wonderfull article was to incorporate new technology like 3D printer in the manufacturing sector as well in R&D in universities all over the country. We as a nation do not need now to go through same process as the industrialised countries did, or the way China/India have done it. Take a close look at following articles:

A very very interesting article about Disruption:
Sådan ruster du dig til en disruptiv fremtid | Jobfinder
(sorry I did translate to english, but it is still in danish)
A World of Vehicle Innovations

I was like WOW. Local motors can practically produce any car and with even fewer parts. Imagine having companies like that in Pakistan - small microfactories producing cars, bikes, ships, machines, engines, different spare parts, yeah you name it.... We must think with new technology, not try to take over jobs from China or other countries...

 

[AhsanAmin]

Here I would like to borrow a page from history how Americans were shocked by Soviet technological superiority when soviets launched the first satellite by humans ever in space. Americans reacted by taking the right steps and showed resolve to improve science and technology education to their students on every level. Sputnik was a decisive moment that forced Americans to rethink and do comprehensive education planning. They raised the science and technology education related budget by billions of dollars and the result was that Americans were again dominant in space race after a decade. However the right education reforms and large spending on science education had the effect that America became a leader in so many other innovative technologies and related sciences. We have to take similar steps in our country Pakistan today.


Source: A History of STEM – Reigniting the Challenge with NGSS and CCSS | Endeavor STEM

A History of STEM – Reigniting the Challenge with NGSS and CCSS

March 12, 2013


Posted by Karen Woodruff,
Associate Director, NASA's Endeavor Science Teaching Certificate Project
(kwoodruff@us-satellite.net)

As we launch into a new era of education reform with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and Common Core State Standards (CCSS), educators can find inspiration when reflecting on the almost 60-year-long runway of education reform which leads up to our current mission in STEM education.

The 1957 launch of Russian satellite Sputnik inspired a generation of innovation in technology and engineering in America. Fueled by our strong competitive spirit and the fear of falling behind other nations, Americans quickly charged into action. Over the next half century, we put men on the Moon, sent robots to Mars, explored the depths of the Earth, and heightened our knowledge of our planet and solar system beyond what most of us could have imagined at the commencement of the Space Race.

With Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy at the helm, Americans channeled fear into action and emerged as the leader in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In his famous speech, following Sputnik, Eisenhower called all Americans to the challenge stating,

“The Soviet Union now has – in the combined category of scientists and engineers – a greater number than the United States. And it is producing graduates in these fields at a much faster rate.”

He called for action,

“We need scientists in the ten years ahead. They (the President’s advisors) say we need them by thousands more than we are now presently planning to have. The Federal government can deal with only part of this difficulty, but it must and will do its part. The task is a cooperative one. Federal, state, and local governments, and our entire citizenry must all do their share.”

The Sputnik generation was poised to accept this challenge and quickly set to work. With the creation of NASA in 1958, the space program rapidly began to unfold. Kennedy continued the charge forward supporting innovations that successfully put the first man on the Moon. A decade after Apollo the United States came out as the leader in the number of students graduating with engineering degrees. The Engineering Workforce Commission cited 80,000 graduates per year in engineering in the mid 1980’s. Federal funding supported education reform shifting focus from rote memorization of facts to a more student centered philosophy emphasizing scientific process and literacy. The Reagan Administration’s National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk, which served as further incentive to reform programs that keep the U.S. competitive. Project 2061 then infused a comprehensive definition of scientific literacy and challenged Americans to meet it by the time Halley’s comet is once again visible from Earth.

In 1996, the National Science Education Standards placed high value on science as a student centered enterprise with inquiry-based learning as a core philosophy. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics guided math educators with K-12 standards outlining math understanding, knowledge, and skills. The International Technology and Engineering Educators Association compiled valuable Standards for Technological Literacy. All of these well constructed guidelines served to structure our classrooms in order to produce students ready for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Yet, after years of education reform and countless standards, the U.S. struggles to maintain an edge. In the 1990’s the National Science Foundation married science, technology, engineering, and math with the acronym “STEM”. While the term is much more commonplace today, it is taking years to overcome confusion about its context; it is often misplaced with stem cell research or plant growth. The acronym embodies the necessary integration of the subject areas necessary to achieve success. After years of research we understand that subjects cannot and should not be taught in isolation, just as they do not exist in isolation in the workforce.

In his 2009 State of the Union Address President Obama renewed the charge forward stating that with the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history,

“We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the Space Race, through policies that invest in basic and applied research, create new incentives for private innovation, promote breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and improve education in math and science.”

He further drives us to action stating,

“Through this commitment, American students will move… from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math over the next decade – for we know that the nation that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow.”

Today, we are uniquely positioned to make significant hurdles with effective education standards and practices which truly integrate the S-T-E-and M. Slowly but steadily educators are beginning to work together to reach across the hall and integrate subject areas for the benefit of students.

The CCCS and NGSS both emphasize the integration of STEM subject areas, evidence based reasoning, and academically productive dialogue in classroom lessons. Plus, for the first time, engineering practices are center stage in our standards. It is our challenge as educators to take this one leap further, moving from siloed, inquiry-based activities to integrated, real-world data driven practices that prepare our students for careers in STEM fields. The integrated STEM movement will be successful with the necessary support and professional development for educators who put standards in practice with their students. In an age of social media and fast paced communication, teachers need to collaborate and access effective, action-driven professional support to help students become engaged listeners, to reason, and to meaningfully externalize their thinking. The success of this recent launch in education reform depends on meaningful integration of STEM subject areas.

Over fifty years after Sputnik inspired Americans to innovate, life is very different. American astronauts are living in space aboard the International Space Station, now in cooperation with Russian cosmonauts. Through federal and private research we take thousands of new technologies for granted in our everyday lives — cell phones, Facetime, X-ray machines, safer food storage, and a slew of others. Our rovers explore distant planets, leave tracks on Mars, and send us exquisitely detailed images and data from our solar system. With a renewed direction and the personal American inspiration to continue to compete in the STEM fields, imagine what this new generation can accomplish. Students in our classrooms today will launch unimaginable innovations in American society, and educators today can help ignite their engines when we deliberately point toward the stars.

Karen Woodruff is an Associate Director for NASA's Endeavor Science Teaching Certificate Project.
This entry was posted in March 2013: Getting on Board with STEM—Building Awareness on March 12, 2013 by Karen Woodruff.

Source: A History of STEM – Reigniting the Challenge with NGSS and CCSS | Endeavor STEM

source: How Sputnik changed U.S. education | Harvard Gazette

How Sputnik changed U.S. education
Fifty years later, panelists consider a new science education ‘surge’
October 11, 2007
By Alvin Powell, Harvard News Office
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Education experts said Oct. 4 that the United States may be overdue for a science education overhaul like the one undertaken after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite 50 years ago, and predicted that a window for change may open as the Iraq war winds down.

Though Sputnik was a relatively simple satellite compared with the more complex machines to follow, its beeping signal from space galvanized the United States to enact reforms in science and engineering education so that the nation could regain technological ground it appeared to have lost to its Soviet rival.

Sputnik’s radio signal highlighted not only the fact that the Soviet Union had beaten the United States into space, it also made it clear the Soviets possessed rocket technology strong enough to launch nuclear bombs at the United States.

Speakers at Thursday’s panel discussion about the educational impact of the Sputnik launch, sponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), said that the nation responded to the security threat by targeting education, a reaction it has repeated since, including after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The post-Sputnik reforms were put in the hands of scientists, much to the dismay of some educators and concerned citizens who had previously had enormous input on curriculum design. Several of the changes, such as including hands-on laboratory experience, remain in use today, the speakers said.

The Oct. 4 panel included Frank Baumgartner, professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University; John Rudolph, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and Tina Grotzer, assistant professor of education at HGSE. It was hosted by Harvard doctoral students Brent Maddin and Rebecca Miller.

Maddin said that Sputnik woke the nation up, serving as a “focusing event” that put a spotlight on a national problem. In this case, he said, the problem was education. Congress responded a year later with the National Defense Education Act, which increased funding for education at all levels, including low-interest student loans to college students, with the focus on scientific and technical education.

Miller said that pattern has been repeated in the decades since, including post-9/11 and more recently, with a focus not on terrorism, but on global economic competition.

“Decades after Sputnik burned in the atmosphere, we’re still talking about science education as a means of security,” Miller said.

While Sputnik may have been a focusing event, Rudolph said changes to the U.S. educational system had been in the works for years. Education reforms began in the early 1950s and were spurred by investment from the National Science Foundation. Perhaps more significant than Sputnik, he said, were two events in 1955, the publication of a book on “Soviet Professional Manpower” and the Soviet detonation of the hydrogen bomb.

In 1957, Rudolph said, Sputnik’s launch further embarrassed the nation, shocking it into action.

“We were getting outworked by conscientious, dedicated Russian students,” Rudolph said. “The launch revealed missile technology that could deliver a bomb to the U.S. … Sputnik raised the stakes.”

While Rudolph said it may be time for another round of reforms, Baumgartner said that that was far easier said than done.

Baumgartner said the political agenda is crowded these days, and it is difficult to get politicians to focus on any particular issue. The Iraq war and the war on terror take up not only a lot of politicians’ time and energy, they do the same for the public, limiting the attention citizens pay to issues such as education reform.

Still, he said, government typically grows during wartime and then shrinks again when wars end, but never back to the prewar level. That presents an opportunity when a conflict ends to not only get reforms enacted, but to get them funded.

Baumgartner cautioned, however, that education is an issue in which many are interested. A national debate over education reform will draw many players into the arena, some of whom have conflicting agendas.

“There’re a lot of people in America that don’t like science,” Baumgartner said. “You have to be careful what you wish for when something like education rises to the front pages. Not only scientists respond. Others who have very serious agendas and political power [are also interested].”

Education reform may be easier to pass in legislation than to realize in the classroom, Grotzer said. Teaching science is challenging, requiring debunking common misconceptions and conceptual progressions that require skilled teachers and which take students from a base knowledge to the understanding of higher concepts.

“The very, very best science teachers with very, very deep understanding of scientific concepts often struggle teaching certain concepts to students,” Grotzer said.


source: How Sputnik changed U.S. education | Harvard Gazette

 

[Stephen Cohen]

@AhsanAmin You should tag more of your country men to get a discussion going

 

[AhsanAmin]

A basic introduction to STEM, a comprehensive approach to teaching sciences, technology and mathematics together with an applied perspective. The following review would help in understanding the simple concepts behind STEM education.


What is STEM Education?
By Elaine J. Hom, LiveScience Contributor | February 11, 2014 05:16pm ET

STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. Rather than teach the four disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEM integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications.

Though the United States has historically been a leader in these fields, fewer students have been focusing on these topics recently. According to the U.S. Department of Education, only 16 percent of high school students are interested in a STEM career and have proven a proficiency in mathematics. Currently, nearly 28 percent of high school freshmen declare an interest in a STEM-related field, a department website says, but 57 percent of these students will lose interest by the time they graduate from high school.

As a result, the Obama administration announced the 2009 "Educate to Innovate" campaign to motivate and inspire students to excel in STEM subjects. This campaign also addresses the inadequate number of teachers skilled to educate in these subjects. The goal is to get American students from the middle of the pack in science and math to the top of the pack in the international arena.

Thirteen agencies are partners in the Committee on Stem Education (CoSTEM), including mission science agencies and the U.S. Department of Education. CoSTEM is working to create a joint national strategy to invest federal funds in K-12 STEM education, increasing public and youth STEM engagement, improving the STEM experience for undergraduates, reaching demographics underrepresented in STEM fields, and designing better graduate education for the STEM workforce. The Department of Education now offers a number of STEM-based programs, including research programs with a STEM emphasis, STEM grant selection programs and general programs that support STEM education.

The Obama administration's 2014 budget invests $3.1 billion in federal programs on STEM education, with an increase of 6.7 percent over 2012. The investments will be made to recruit and support STEM teachers, as well as support STEM-focused high schools with STEM Innovation Networks. The budget also invests into advanced research projects for education, to better understand next-generation learning technologies.

The importance of STEM education
All of this effort is to meet a need. According to a report by the websiteSTEMconnector.org, by 2018, projections estimate the need for 8.65 million workers in STEM-related jobs. The manufacturing sector faces an alarmingly large shortage of employees with the necessary skills — nearly 600,000. The field of cloud computing alone will have created 1.7 million jobs between 2011 and 2015, according to the report. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2018, the bulk of STEM careers will be:

Computing – 71 percent
Traditional Engineering – 16 percent
Physical sciences – 7 percent
Life sciences – 4 percent
Mathematics – 2 percent
STEM jobs do not all require higher education or even a college degree. Less than half of entry-level STEM jobs require a bachelor's degree or higher. However, a four-year degree is incredibly helpful with salary — the average advertised starting salary for entry-level STEM jobs with a bachelor's requirement was 26 percent higher than jobs in the non-STEM fields, according to the STEMconnect report. For every job posting for a bachelor's degree recipient in a non-STEM field, there were 2.5 entry-level job postings for a bachelor's degree recipient in a STEM field.

This is not a problem unique to the United States. In the United Kingdom, the Royal Academy of Engineering reports that the Brits will have to graduate 100,000 STEM majors every year until 2020 just to meet demand. According to the report, Germany has a shortage of 210,000 workers in the mathematics, computer science, natural science and technology disciplines.

Blended learning
What separates STEM from the traditional science and math education is the blended learning environment and showing students how the scientific method can be applied to everyday life. It teaches students computational thinking and focuses on the real world applications of problem solving. As mentioned before, STEM education begins while students are very young:

Elementary school — STEM education focuses on the introductory level STEM courses, as well as awareness of the STEM fields and occupations. This initial step provides standards-based structured inquiry-based and real world problem-based learning, connecting all four of the STEM subjects. The goal is to pique students' interest into them wanting to pursue the courses, not because they have to. There is also an emphasis placed on bridging in-school and out-of-school STEM learning opportunities.
Middle school — At this stage, the courses become more rigorous and challenging. Student awareness of STEM fields and occupations is still pursued, as well as the academic requirements of such fields. Student exploration of STEM related careers begins at this level, particularly for underrepresented populations.
High school — The program of study focuses on the application of the subjects in a challenging and rigorous manner. Courses and pathways are now available in STEM fields and occupations, as well as preparation for post-secondary education and employment. More emphasis is placed on bridging in-school and out-of-school STEM opportunities.
Much of the STEM curriculum is aimed toward attracting underrepresented populations. Female students, for example, are significantly less likely to pursue a college major or career. Though this is nothing new, the gap is increasing at a significant rate. Male students are also more likely to pursue engineering and technology fields, while female students prefer science fields, like biology, chemistry, and marine biology. Overall, male students are three times more likely to be interested in pursuing a STEM career, the STEMconnect report said.

Ethnically, Asian students have historically displayed the highest level of interest in the STEM fields. Prior to 2001, students of an African-American background also showed high levels of interest in STEM fields, second only to the Asian demographic. However, since then, African-American interest in STEM has dropped dramatically to lower than any other ethnicity. Other ethnicities with high STEM interest include American Indian students.

 

[AhsanAmin]

The conventional sectors of the economy and related industries in the country also strongly benefit from a better research oriented human capital in the country as new technology helps in value addition in the conventional industries and greatly increases the profits and value of the final industrial products. And lack of the competent human capital that can do research and contribute to value-addition, is one of the reason why we continue to fail in modernizing our textiles and other conventional industries. Our exports compete in the world markets only because human labor in Pakistan is too cheap and that gives our people a marginal edge when they compete with other countries and they can make some minor profits to sustain their business. With proper technological innovation, research and value addition, we can increase the profits even in conventional industries by several fold. Without technological innovation and value-addition we can never plug the gap between our exports and imports and this gap continues to increase every year and would finally become totally unsustainable for our economy without regular depreciation of the Pakistani rupee as compared to other world currencies. Lack of a large technology base and reliance on conventional industries like textiles is one of the reason that our exports never grow by a large percentage. In order to increase exports, we have to encourage technology innovation and value addition in existing conventional industries like textiles and also grow human capital and skilled brains into more technology intensive industries and areas of economy.

It is not enough for the government to give tax incentives to high technology sectors of the economy as is the current practice. The government has to make a well planned strategic effort to give right skills to our people and train human capital in modern sciences and technologies. The government has to foster and encourage a culture of research in our universities while encouraging bigger businesses to invest in highly skilled research staff. The government has to make a well planned and coordinated effort to make sure that graduates from different universities are well equipped with scientific research and computing skills. This has to be done both by choosing the right people that enter academia in the respective scientific professions and later training them how to teach their students in the best way so that students learn to have a research and computing related mindset for the rest of their life. The government should give tax incentives only to those companies who establish a world standard research department, that can possibly be quite small for smaller companies, where the company invests in the right technology experts who do cutting edge research, scientific modelling and use state of the art computational methods in order to advance technological innovation and value addition in their respective industries. There also has to be an accreditation associated with this research department so the accreditation company validates that a certain minimum level of criteria have been fulfilled in choosing the right people and right investment has been made related to computing and research equipment and technologies.

Many proponents of comparative advantage advise the backward countries against investing in technology related sectors. This is extremely myopic if we take the comparative advantage theory as it is and decide to not invest in technology related sectors. Comparative advantage theory could have been true if the skills of people in a country would never change forever. Smart countries continue to invest more money in giving right skills to their people as the relevance of various technologies on the global scale continues to change. Comparative advantage is not something static and the countries have to create comparative advantage in the right sectors by giving the right skills to their people. When Singapore was asked to leave Malaysian Union in 1965, half of their population was illiterate and they had absolutely no comparative advantage in what they do today. They planned everything extremely well in how to give the right skills to their people by increasing the expenditure on education and enhancing the quality of education on every level. They invested heavily in training their people in the best science and technology professions of that time. Today Singapore probably has the highest per capita income than any other country in the world. There is no secret sauce here and every country can grow fast by following similar pattern of investment in good quality education and decisively promoting research in cutting edge scientific research and new innovative technologies.

Though most Pakistanis want to have better relations with India and want both countries to concentrate on alleviating poverty than promoting an atmosphere of hostilities, I am very aware that there are enough hardliner Indians who would not stop short of damaging our country if they can get an opportunity to hurt us. I would like to stress that India is slowly and steadily broadening her technological base and a culture of applied scientific research and knowledge of emerging technologies proliferates there at a much faster pace. In today's world, a country like ours whose economy relies on conventional industries and technologies of the past can never compete with more technologically advanced countries. In a worst case scenario, our Pakistan will be a smaller country with dated technologies facing a much larger country with more technological edge and in order to avoid that worst case scenario, we have to promote a culture of science and technology research and integration of new sciences in our economy at a much faster speed than India does. All patriotic Pakistanis including Pakistan Army have to stress the today's civilian government to take immediate steps to take right, decisive, and comprehensive actions to promote a culture of scientific and technological research.

 

[niaz]

In my humble opinion, our problem lies in the low education standards. There are 4 different kinds of School. One for the very rich & the elite such as Aitchison College. Second for the middle class (English medium private schools). Third the gov’t schools for the common man and finally the Madrassa system whose product is useless for everyday life except for joining a jihadi out fit and become a terrorist. What we need is a lot of investment and prioritisation of the education over everything else. Instead what we get is fake degrees. But the mind-set is such that people like Jamshed Dasti, who was disqualified for it, is re-elected even though our constitution calls for Sadiq & Ameen candidate. Problem is the mind-set. We are ready to shut the gov’t because an extra judicial killer got his just punishment but don’t give a fig when proven dishonest men elected to office.


We should follow the South Korean example.


South Korean Education Reforms
(Stephen Hucker/flickr)

Over the last two decades, Korea has shown what can be done to improve education. It has extended class size and schooling hours to meet a surging demand for better education, and students from all socio-economic levels do well on examinations, including the sophisticated problem-solving skills on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Primary and secondary enrollment rates have been near universal since about 1990, and currently 86 percent of young Koreans enroll in higher education programs. There was an unprecedented increase in primary and secondary education from around 1975 to 1990 when the country also grew at a rapid rate. A commensurate growth in tertiary education took place thereafter and continues to date. This expansion can be explained by a number of convergent factors: cultural and historical reasons, economic growth, value placed on education, and government policies that promote educational achievement.

Background

To begin, a long tradition of Confucianism has established a society in which the scholar sits at the top of the social hierarchy and the attainment of knowledge is considered a priority. The educated person in Korea, thus, is highly respected. However, even ordinary Koreans could enjoy the respect and privileges of this highest class by passing the Kwageo (a rigorous civil service examination that pays little heed to consanguinity and political ties) to become civil servants. This democratization of talent has put great stock in the power of education to transform lives.

Alongside this, a national drive against Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945 placed a lot of emphasis on the importance of economic self-reliance and national cultivation through education. This resulted in the establishment of approximately 3,000 private schools across the nation, which bolstered the Korean education system. The devastating Korean War that followed left the country bereft of any social, physical, and economic capital. The recovery process was done on Korea’s own terms and through hard work.

Investments in Education

The dramatic growth of the Korean economy has also contributed significantly to the value that Koreans place on higher education. In the past 25 years, the country has realized an extraordinarily high rate of return from education investment, hovering around 10 percent. As Dr. SooBong Uh, from the Korea University of Technology and Education has stated, “It is wiser for young people to invest their money in education than to keep it in the bank.”

Secondarily, there is a large and growing wage premium attached to obtaining a higher education in Korea. In 2007, for instance, college graduates earn up to 2.5 times more than their colleagues with a junior high school degree. With the rapid industrialization of the country, Korea’s labor market is highly segmented along educational background. As such, obtaining higher education is seen as essential to enter the primary labor market. Partially as a result of this relationship, in addition to the tradition of Confucianism, education is associated with positions of power and influence: graduates from ten major universities have almost three-fourths of the high-ranking government positions.

The government also shows a consistent commitment to investing in education: The Ministry of Education has a budget of US$29 billion, six times what it was in 1990. This accounts for about 20 percent of the central government expenditure. Koreans, as well, are willing to spend on education. The Korean government spends 3.4 percent of GDP on formal schooling; when taking private and informal schooling into account the amount nears 10 percent. Teachers are seen as a key part of that investment: OECD statistics place Korea 10th in rankings of entering teacher salaries. After fifteen years of service, Korean teachers move up to third place, demonstrating that the investment grows significantly over time.

The Teaching Profession

Like other high-performing nations, teaching is a highly competitive occupation. Teacher preparation programs for elementary school teachers have a limited number of places and selective entry, while no limits are set for students interested in becoming secondary school teachers: all can enter a preparation program though only 20 percent find employment as secondary school teachers. Selectivity for the elementary program means that there is not much competition for jobs; elementary schools have barely as many candidates as there are teaching vacancies. Teachers work less than 600 hours per year, however, class size ranges to from 37-50 students. Local teacher’s associations exist at the city and province level. The Korean Federation of Teachers Association (KFTA) is the central representative of these associations and meets annually with the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development to discuss teachers’ welfare. Three teachers unions also exist. The position of school principal has been held in high regard until recently when the teacher’s unions have begun to call into question the selection process and the verification of candidate’s abilities.

The School System

The Korean school system is a 6-3-3-4 system; that is, six years of primary school, three years of junior high, three years of senior high school and four years of college. The system contains national, public, and private schools. The administrative structure to oversee education consists of federal governance, as well as regional and local control. However, the system overall is highly centralized. For instance, the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development dictates the national curriculum, which, along with regional guidelines, only allows individual school principals to choose their own goals.

Curriculum for a Globalized Economy

The curriculum has undergone major revisions seven times since 1954, to “reflect the newly rising demands for education, emerging needs of a changing society, and new frontiers of academic disciplines.”

The most recent update, known as the Seventh Curriculum, aims to prepare students for the knowledge-based, globalized 21st century. To that end, it emphasizes individuality, creativity, and knowledge of Korean culture as well as other cultures. Covering grades one through ten, students are allowed to choose their own courses in their final two years of high school.

All students study English beginning in primary school and continue through high school where additional foreign language classes are offered.

New Challenges to Overcome

Despite all of the achievements of Korea, some distinctive problems still face their education system. According to Okhwa Lee, professor at Chungbuk National University, “Korea has a high graduation rate, but Koreans have a low passion for education.” Too many people view educational institutions as “convenience institutes” – like convenience stores. The government’s Korea 2030 Commission is examining how to make lifelong learning an integral aspect of Korea’s continuing dynamism.

South Korean Education Reforms | Global Cities Education Network | Asia Society