TRADITIONAL pedagogies, abhorrence to innovation and obsolete curriculum obstructs schools and varsities from meeting the demands of the industry. Employers lament the lack of critical thinking and leadership in the interviewees. Students complain what they learn in schools is boring, theoretical and unrewarding. Stronger than any Bollywood love triangle is the hate triad of students, educational institutes and industry in Pakistan.

First and the Second industrial revolution in Britain, continental Europe, North America, and Japan triggered mass production in the industry - requiring the standardized model of direct learning widely used in mainstream education today. Educational institutes then aimed at generating the uniform talent to fill process-based early manufacturing jobs where innovations, critical thinking and creativity were not a priority. 

This prevalent mode of learning in schools inspired by the initial industrial revolutions produce unproductive minds for the jobs of today and tomorrow. The process-based-learning and misalignment of the students, schools and industry gravely hamper the country’s anticipation to tap its youth potential.  Not trained to find creative solutions to real-world problems there remains little hope that the current education system will enable students to capture a market share of e-commerce and the IT industry in the future world – something Pakistan is aiming for with its 5G technology. 

“I have spent more than three million on my bachelor’s degree but still looking for a decent job, government jobs are shrinking and the competition is increasing day by day,” said Saad who graduated three years ago in Computer Science from a private university in Lahore. His father used his retirement fund to finance his son’s education. Since then, Saad has been working in a call-center as a telemarketing agent, unable to land a job matching his qualification.

There are a large number of students like him who despite having a degree fail to impress employers. Either their degrees are not relevant to the job market or they do not have acquired the right skill-set during their school years. Whenever an opportunity strikes, these fresh graduates underperform. ‘Government jobs’ remain the only option where performance is not the discriminating criteria for progress. For jobs requiring out-of-box thinking like teaching and policy-making, these graduates of process-based-learning prove to be the worst.

In the class teachers deliver knowledge to the students by demonstrations – arriving at a particular answer by using formulas, equations and fundamentals. Students’ role is limited to memorize and imitate for solving other similar problems. Whatever learning happens is accidental. Generally, grades are what matters the most – not the skills. Now, for many parents in Pakistan; sending kids to school has become a futile exercise; it is a ritual for the rest with no return for their hard-earned investment. Suffering is inevitable.

In the past, many international technological and automobile giants have turned down their plans of opening manufacturing plants in Pakistan because of the unavailability of the required talent. Instead, they opted for India and Bangladesh where the educational institutes produce graduates meeting the demands of the industry.

To foster creative thinking the way forward needs a two-fold strategy: the shift from the ‘process-based learning’ to ‘problem-based learning’ and concurrent objectives of the stakeholders: schools, students and the industry. 

Comparing both the models. In a process-based learning; teaching to calculate the volume of a cylinder to the class will involve memorizing the formula and using it for different sizes of the cylinders. Contrarily, a problem-based approach will require students to design a cylinder; having a volume sufficient enough to store the drinking water for a small town in summer while preventing excessive evaporation. An open-ended problem like this enables students to be innovative without the pressure of reaching a single answer.

On the other hand, educational institutes must focus on the individual learning traits of the students. Adaptive learning technology must be incorporated to analyze each student’s skill level and develop personalized learning pathways for them. Schools must focus on the skill development and learning outcomes rather than the grades which only measure the ability to parrot details and reproduce them.

Schools need to be proactive as they prepare students for jobs that even do not exist at the moment. Educational institutes must ensure that they produce graduates that can fulfill the demands of the industry currently and in the future. Education policymaking must be more than political point-scoring and needs to be visionary unlike the past.