Daily Times

My grandfather (who has more degrees after his name than years in his calendar) continues to drumroll the same rhetoric every Sunday lunch. Study hard, come first and become a doctor. From a young age, I have heard this often repeated adage being pounded into my head: parho, likoo aur banoo gay nawab.

As I look at the world around me, I find myself wondering if this even holds true anymore. Take the recent Shark Tank Pakistan show for instance. In episode 2, an aeronatical engineer failed to receive even a dollar’s worth of investment whereas a single mother with a hair oil brand got her ask.

The former had a US education in a highly specialised field whereas the latter had no education whatsoever! She had grit. She had passion. And she had persistence. In the post Covid-19 world, where norms such as classroom learning and going to an office to work have been challenged and shaken up, the link between higher education and higher earnings has also been challenged. Often the more degrees, qualifications and specialisations one has, the more limited one’s options, especially in Pakistan.

The most students are studying without being aware of what jobs are available, and this is in part because of weak university-industry linkages.

I recently came across research by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics which states that unemployment amongst the “highly educated” is about 3x the average unemployment rate in Pakistan.

In a published and much discussed paper “Disaggregating the graduate unemployment in Pakistan”, the authors believe that most students are studying without being aware of what jobs are available, and this is in part because of weak university-industry linkages.

At the moment, Pakistan is ranked 63rd out of 163 countries on World Bank’s University-industry linkage index, showing that this is an area where there is a lot of room for improvement.

HEC annual reports show that the bulk of university graduates in Pakistan are in arts and humanities, for whom there are hardly any jobs available. When there are jobs available, the salaries are so low that it could take eons to just recoup the investment.

A report by the Higher Education Commission FY23 also states that there are about 470,000 graduates which includes Bachelors, Masters and PhD graduates. Are there jobs for all these people?

Probably not! The percentage increase in joblessness as the degree becomes more and more advanced is revealing of this truth.

The writer is Pakistan’s first and only kid bloggers and blogs at www.aahilkeyaan.com.