Daily Times

According to the 2017 census report, Pakistan is a homeland of over 207 million individuals when compared with the most technologically savvy nation on the Earth, the Japan, having a population of 127 million. If compared area wise, the total area of Pakistan (796,095 km2) is almost double the area of Japan. Each Pakistani owns more land when compared to a Japanese individual. However, the GDP per capita for Japan (38,894.47 USD) is 27 times higher than an individual living in Pakistan. Fortunately, I had an opportunity to work in educational systems of both these nations and deeply observed the Pakistani and Japanese systems and strongly believe that Pakistan can learn a lot from Japanese experience to uplift its academic and economic environments. In the following, I will describe the Japanese system and how it can be manipulated in Pakistani environments.

Japan is among the world top pacesetters for the advancement and application of the most innovative technological systems and this trendsetting locus is attributed merely to a very coherent and superlative, highly comprehensive, and a sustained meritocratic quality higher education system (HES). The success of Japanese HES can very clearly be verified in the current QS ranking (2018), the universal ranking on education surveys, where fifteen Japanese universities enjoy their status among the top 500 world universities. Instead, there is only one university from Pakistan that falls within top 500 universities of the world. Curriculum also promotes the students ability/quality to find a subject to visualize, judge and find a solution on their own to enhance a problem solving learning through observation, experimentation and project studies. Also, teacher quality is another key element that attributes to generate the world’s best educated and most dedicated, creative and productive workforce.

Japan is among the world’s top pacesetters for the advancement and application of the most innovative technological systems and this trendsetting locus is attributed merely to a very coherent and superlative, highly comprehensive, and a sustained meritocratic quality higher education system

The success of Japanese HES is indeed an outcome of the significant reforms implemented during the last two centuries (19th-20th) by adapting, accommodating and attaining the beneficial and advantageous knowledge, information and technology from a diverse education systems. These reforms have contributed to develop novelty, uniqueness and globalization of education, and to generate a workforce with hands-on experience/vision of innovative solutions to emerging challenges. Besides, equality in education is an additional norm of the modern educational system in Japan. Also, another secret of the success of Japanese education is their emphasis on the student’s character building. The Japanese HES believes in producing of quality students, not in number of students, and this can very easily be envisaged that Japan holds 597 universities (by the year 2010) to support a population of 127 million while there exist only 156 universities in Pakistan for a population of over 207 million people. This picture very evidently signifies the standpoint of Pakistan where it stands in the modern global era.

Moreover, Japan is steadfast to uphold its position among the top global benchmarks of education systems. Japanese believe that international benchmarking is crucial for their national standpoint to ensure a long-term economic competitiveness. For that reason, Japan is always striving for the best performers to adapt. The creation of the 21st century COE (Centers of Excellence) program launched during 2002 to nurture a competitive academic environment among Japanese universities to establish the research and education of world-standards is the best example of this belief. Based on the success of the 21st COE program, another initiative the “Global COE Program” was established to execute at the pinnacle of the global excellence to uplift the international competitiveness of the Japanese universities and to create the evidence and quality-based young researchers who have a vision and ability to become world leaders in their particular fields. Later on “Global 30 Program” was executed during 2009 with aims to promote a high quality international academic environment to produce the dynamic future leaders of the global community. Now, this year April 2017, a highly challenging initiative, “The Supper Global University Program” has been launched where 37 leading Japanese universities will reform the Japanese higher education to compete for the current global age.

Besides, Japan is persistently striving on technology-transfer from the university to the industry/market to commercialize university research to foster economic growth of the country. Since the mid-1990s, Japan has introduced a set of policy reforms to promote greater university contribution in commercial pursuit. The Japanese government has declared that improving university-industry collaboration is critical for economic revival of the country. The quality innovative research also attributes to the Japanese success as a first-rate teaching force as can be evidenced by the successful victory of twenty two Japanese winners of the “Nobel Prize” only in science -a pride of Japan. But how about Pakistan, only one “Nobel Laureate” in science.

The author has witnessed very closely the success story of Japanese HES, being a part of it-at all levels of academics and research, at Kobe University (Japan) for over two decades, first as a JICA trainee (1995), then as a MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) scholar for Master and PhD program (1997-2003), later on as a visiting scientist (JSPS Post-doc fellow) (2003-2005), then a as a faculty member (2006-2012) and now as a visiting Professor (2014-to date) and would like to share briefly some suggestions, based on his experience and learning from global communities especially from the Japanese system, to meet the challenges of higher education in Pakistan to promote sustainable culture of knowledge and technology transfer for socio-economic development of the country and quality life.

Quantitative expansion of the universities.

Quality and excellence in all fields of learning, teaching, research and innovation.

Retaining the status quo is not a choice.

Establishing infrastructure and state-of-the-art facilities.

Capacity building programs.

Ensuring a sustainable environment.

Equality-higher education for all.

Quality assurance and accreditation.

Collaboration and cooperation, both nationally and globally.

Short term and long term strategic plans of the universities.

Brain gain initiative.

Centers of excellence (COE) for research and innovations.

Character development for future team players.

Visionary leadership for institutions of higher learning.

Developing of a technology/research-oriented society.

University-industry linkages-Technology-transfer program.

The writer is vice chancellor of the Ghazi University, Dera Ghazi Khan He can be reached vc@gudgk.edu.pk; mtufail.ksu@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, December 18^th2018.