The University of Gujrat (UOG) reflects the government’s approach to
make the fruits of higher learning available to maximum people,
including those living in rural areas of the country. Therefore, it
can play a key role in harnessing the local potential that would
provide the most needed skills required for modernising the industry
in Gujrat and adjoining areas. Once industrial units
manufacturing different kinds of products of light engineering and a
host of other varieties have the services of qualified managerial
and technical staff, they would be able to attract local as well as
foreign markets easily, thus reducing the country’s import bill and
bringing in more foreign exchange.
The University, in close collaboration with the Higher Education
Commission (HEC), is already in touch with foreign institutions from
where it could acquire the services of qualified teachers of different
subjects.
Promoting higher education in Pakistan, where the literacy rate is low
and the quality of education poor, is a daunting task. Universities
today are not judged just by their ability to transfer knowledge, but
by their capacity to create new knowledge. They are measured by high
quality PhD output; patents that are commercialised based on the work
carried out in them; honours and awards won by the faculty at the
international level; citations of the work of the faculty in the
Science Citation Index; impact of the journals in which the work of
the faculty is published; and international grants won by the faculty.
These and other such measures that reflect the creativity of the
faculty and students of the university determine its academic stature.
The
management of UOG will also have to use similar yardsticks to measure
its performance, so that it could emerge as a genuinely high quality
institution of learning.
Dr Javed R Leghari