IT education

The first test results confront a whole generation with a problem

We are by now becoming inured to being told that the future is Information Technology, that it is Artificial Intelligence, that it is robotics, and that the future belongs to those who have been educated and trained in this field. All of us, with our backgrounds in humanities more often than not, have gone on to make policy decisions which (we hope) will lead in this direction. It was therefore worrying to learn that 33,038 students of 190 higher education institutions had taken part in a national skills competency test conducted by the Higher Education Commission to assess the capabilities of IT graduates and assess whether the university curricula were producing industry-relevant skills. The result, to put it mildly, was not good. Only 0.4 percent of the students scored above 80 marks, and only 3.6 percent more crossed 68 percent. No less than 61 percent obtained less than 50 percent marks.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was informed of this, and ordered a very preliminary step: third-party evaluation. That means that the problem-fixing mechanism of the federal government cannot tackle this. This is no quick-fix problem, but shows that Academia has become an ivory tower. That might be all very well for such disciplines as comparative literature or art history, but fatal for computer sciences and emerging technologies. One problem with them, worldwide, is that of becoming outdated. Teaching students now to code in FORTRAN or COBOL is a little like teaching English Literature students Chaucer. E.Lit students are not taught any discernible skills, but then, no one expects them to be employed in industry. Then there is the problem that our computer whizzes are imitative, skilled at best reproducing what is done by foreigners. Some of the most successful hi-tech entrepreneurs were college dropouts. We have no equivalent.

The dissonance between industry and Academia has always been there. Now, though, it cannot be afforded. Input from industry must be taken, while keeping in mind that industry may not know what the future will be like. The real challenge, though, has been identified: equipping the coming generation with the skills that enable people to function effectively in the workplace of tomorrow. The government’s role cannot be more than that of an enabler: making sure its own curricula are not as hopelessly outdated as they seem to be, making sure that computers get electricity and that digital connectivity is not impaired.