Pakistan’s IT Exports stood at $1.94 billion in the first 9 months of the current fiscal year (FY23), showing a decline of 0.5 percent compared to the same period last year. Considering the trend, IT exports are expected to miss the $5 billion annual target by miles.
The decline has been largely attributed to a global decline in capital investment in the technology sector amid rising interest rates and exporters remitting money through grey channels due to exchange rate disparity.
But despite the government bridging the gap between interbank and open market exchange rates in January, the slow rebound of exports indicates that the biggest problem is the lack of a talent base to support the planned rise in exports.
Experts argue that Pakistan needs to train 100,000 IT professionals every year in order to meet the industry demand and put the country’s exports in the upward direction and there is a lot needed to be done to even come close to that mark.
Every other day we hear leaders and motivational speakers hailing Pakistan’s rich human resources, but if we go ask a startup or an international company for that matter, they will say that there is a severe shortage of highly skilled professionals, especially in the IT industry.
Despite the top universities and startups focusing on training, most graduates coming out of universities fail to get hired even after four years of rigorous education with no special on-campus training. Pakistan annually produces 35,000 graduates in IT and related fields which is not enough to provide for the booming IT service sector.
Pakistan is way behind in terms of employability, even when it comes to blue and grey-collar workers, with a strong negative trend in terms of jobs creation, noted Bazigh Kiani, CEO of Bhartee, an emerging startup that aims to democratize recruitment and enhance employability in Pakistan’s youth internationally.
While India has successfully upscaled its immigrant workforce as well as the growing young population through IIT colleges, Pakistanis working in other countries have largely failed in this regard, he added.
India has built two dozen IIT colleges across the country which maintain a particular set of quality education and training in uplifting the individuals in their respective spaces. Pakistan also needs to invest more in skill-based training rather than big university degrees as not everyone is going to be a founder, inventor, or leader.
Reforming Higher Education:
Before we embark on building new institutes, the existing infrastructure also needs rigorous reforms to produce industry-standard graduates. Students do their part by coming to universities and completing their syllabus but if our curriculum at higher secondary level and universities is substandard, it goes a long way in lowering the quality talent pool.
Curriculum in schools and colleges needs to be outlined according to industry guidelines so that when students get out of college, they can make an informed decision about their future. A large number of students realize after one or two years the true implication on their lives of what they are studying.
The process of self-discovery is limited to a few elite institutions which is another big reason behind the large number of graduates remaining unemployable. Students coming from even the public sector universities can be highly successful but only if they are not in the wrong market compared to their nature.
Industry-based degrees:
While there is no doubt in that fact that higher education requires an immediate overhaul in Pakistan, universities may not be the perfect answer to this conundrum in the first place for a demographic like Pakistan.
Pakistan requires a large number of regulated institutes to impart skills to the general population as we can’t heavily invest in higher education anyway. The industry requires a highly skilled grassroots workforce that can drive growth domestically and can also be sent to growing MENA economies.
In January, Higher Education Commission (HEC) decided to introduce two-year special degree programmes to supplement the shortage of workforce in the IT industry.
These steps should be highly encouraged as they may allow the graduates to enter the market two years earlier, and reduce the cost of education to half. Faculty of these courses especially needed to be brought from the industry and opportunities for industry-led scholarships should also be explored.
Internships and In-house training:
Coming to the subject of industry-led scholarship, it is also to be noted how the concept of an internship is abused and mismanaged at the university level. Students from public sector IT universities often remain deprived of the chance of industry-based internships with some being made to do their internships in government institutions where training and work standards are not remotely per international standards.
Big IT companies on the other hand are also reluctant to invest time and capital to build their own human resources and rather rely on people from other organizations.
Companies need to put efforts into developing the talent to bring visible change, though I don’t expect much of these initiatives in the near future amid current economic woes, added Bazigh Kiani from Bhartee.
Source: Pro Pakistani