At the career crossroads

By Hafsah Sarfraz 


Today’s world focuses on more variety than what was offered to the previous generations. Take coffee for example … there are so many types of coffee to choose according to your taste and preference. Ice cream, which was available in maximum 10 flavors a few years ago, comes in hundreds of different flavors and combinations now. New cell phone models keep popping into the market everyday while giving us a greater variety to choose from. From lawn prints to cars, laptops or anything you can think of the variety is just growing giving us an astounding amount of choices today.

Rooting out illiteracy

KARACHI:  Nabila, Zahoor and Majida faced the same problem that many of their peers in government-run schools do: they lacked the means to pursue higher education.

But things took a fortunate turn for these ambitious yet underprivileged children. Nabila, who hails from a typical Punjabi family from Minhalla, is now the first member of her family to study to complete her Masters while Zahoor Ahmed from Mauribad has realised his dream of being an electrical engineer. And 14-year-old Majida, after losing her home and family members during the devastating floods in Shahdad Kot, is now able to read and write Urdu.
There are similar other narratives of how students, hampered by financial shortfalls, were given a chance to get educated. For instance, students of Sindh Madrassa Board (SMB) Fatima Jinnah — previously considered a substandard institution — now have the resources and teachers to compete aside the top league of school in Karachi.
The mushrooming of non-governmental organisations and community-based initiatives in the field of education has made these success stories possible. However, the offer for free or subsidised provision of education hardly attracted scores of eager students to these institutions.
In a country where children and women are often fraught with the obligation to financially support their families, even the opportunity of acquiring education gratis is not attractive. Yet despite the odds, the perseverance of the people behind these initiatives helped them survive and achieve the tall order of educating Pakistan’s poor youth.

Pakistan Students Problems and Their Solutions

Pakistan Students face many problems in daily life we share some Students’ problems in Pakistan. Student life is full of charm and enjoy and every one who is in practical life always miss his/her student life. But with lots of joys and fun student life is also have some challenges and problems. The students of developing countries like Pakistan have lots of problems, as financial problems, poor transportation system of Pakistan, language barrier, insincere teachers and many more problems. Some students didn’t get admission in their desired colleges or in desired study programs. In spite of all these problems and challenges the student life is best period of everyone’s life. Some problems faced by students are given below.

In Pakistan education is very expensive due to the shortage of public educational institutes.

We have only 73 public universities and most of the population study in these universities. Similarly, there is short number of public colleges where students can get free education. Our most of the students belong to the middle class and they have very limited resources. Parents can’t afford easily the expenses of studying their children. Lots of students have to work part time to sponsor their studies themselves. In students life nearly every student usually face financial crisis.

For this problem Govt. and Private sector will have some programs to solve the financial problems of the students and also universities have financial loan programs too.

Transportation
Traffic is a very common problem of the citizens of Pakistan. You will see traffic jams on the roads at morning and evening timings. People are packed in the buses and vans like sacks, young students climb up the roofs of the buses, vehicle’s horns never allow you to hear the voice of the person beside you. All of us face these traffic problems but here I’ll we discuss how it create problems for students.

Universities and Local city Govt can solve this problem because in Pakistan oil prices are bit high.

Career counseling

Students when pass their matriculation examinations they face too much confusion about the selection of their further studies. They don’t know which one study area is best for them. Most of the students don’t know the different areas of study rather than Engineering and Medical due to lack of the counseling. They got admission in these sequences and didn’t have enough marks because it was not their interest area. So they can’t get admission in medical or engineering colleges. At that time they are very upset and thinking of their career.

Language Barrier

When students got admission in colleges or universities they face a very common problem of language barrier. Most of the students were studied in Urdu and in colleges and universities most subjects and books are in English. They can’t understand it easily.

This language barrier is also caused lack of confidence among students who got education in Urdu. In colleges and universities they meet the students of English medium schools who speaks English fluently they lose their confident in class. Experts believe that students can learn very quickly in their mother tongue but in our Pakistan we are running behind English language.


Article Source: http://education.ezinemark.com/pakistan-students-problems-and-their-solutions-7d2f6a0d566a.html

People spends much more time choosing a car than a career

Selecting a career is an uphill task and most crucial decision in ones life. Occupation of a profession of a person determines his mode of living and economic prospects. Moreover, a particular working atmosphere and service structure influences attitude and behavior of an individual. A particular line of work is the focal way to accomplish goals, materialize ambitions and realize dreams in the twisting and meandering life course. Therefore, appropriate information and guidelines are mandatory to select a vocation according to ones aptitude.

Educated parents, relatives and peers, teachers of educational institutions, experts in career planning, various websites and mass media are fountains of information that can help students in choosing occupations according to their inclinations. However, students of the Developing Countries do not have apposite awareness about different professions due to non-availability or less availability of credible information about vistas and prestige attached with various fields of work. Resultantly, due to ignorance about contemporary upscale horizons in these backward countries, many educated people move like rudderless boats in selecting careers and frequently change their occupations.

Lack of awareness about career planning has grave implications for the future of the candidates. Time and again changing of profession results in wastage of energy and resources. Education and experience gained for one profession become useless after changing the row of employment. For example, several doctors and engineers in the developing countries join civil services through competitive examination. In bureaucratic service, they get opportunities once in a blue moon to use their medical knowledge and engineering expertise.

 It seems that their career is determined by fate than by choice. Thus they are slaves of the environment and are driven by its waves rather than permitting their passions and determination to dominate over fate. A doctor becomes a bureaucrat while an engineer becomes a businessman.  In this way, a lot of states’ resources to train professionals went down the drain. As these backward countries already face shortage of such experts; therefore, change of profession also results in internal brain drain.

 Changing of vocation also generates frustration in the educated people because of comparison with previous professions and looking for future avenues in the new service. Some people do not adjust and get satisfaction in the new fields and return back to their parent professions. When they compare their professional training, skills and educational progress with their previous colleagues, they feel chilling frustration due to fear of lagging behind. These turncoats are prone to indulge in criminal activities leading to drug addiction, damaging of determination, psychological illnesses, etc.

In the Developed Countries, the kids are directed properly at institutional level; therefore, they choose professions according to their tendencies. Career planning institutions of these countries conduct seminars to guide the learners. They also carry out career planning tests to judge capabilities and aptitudes of the students. Through these assessments, experts direct the new generations to choose professions according to their mental propensity to develop apposite faculties. While in the developing countries such direction at institutional level is negligible. Therefore, the students remain ignorant about suitability of professions, scope of careers, admission processes, available institutions for a range of subjects, cost of adopting a particular business, social esteem pinned with different professions, etc.

In the well-lined countries, children are being encouraged by parents and teachers to take decisions independently. Such positive encouragements instill self-confidence and self-reliance among them. Paradoxically, in the developing countries social pressures and established cultural values are driving forces that compel the people to change their line of work. In many cases, decisions regarding career and marriage are imposed by parents without considering liking and disliking of offspring. Ignorance of parents about aptitude of their siblings and new learning horizons result in imposition of decisions regarding career of children. For example, in Pakistan parents of talented students want to make their children doctors or engineers without considering bent of the children towards arts, literature, accounting, social sciences, etc. Such practices act as stumbling blocks and mount failure probability of such students in educational and practical life manifolds.

In Pakistan, the students especially face problems at matriculation and intermediate level. They choose pre-medical or pre-engineering subjects and those who fail to get admissions in medical colleges and engineering institutions are left with few options because they do not know about variety of available educational opportunities and learning avenues. Some professionals appear in competitive examinations and join bureaucracy.

Culture of restricting and selling information is also a major barrier in the way of carrier planning for students. Majority of the public sector educational institutions in the UDCs are not in a position to properly guide the students while the private sector institutions exorbitantly charge fees that is beyond the reach of majority of the students. The students are left on the mercy of the academies to fleece them.

Uneducated parents fail to guide their siblings in career planning. For such students, the public and private sector institutions are the only source of information. This happens in the countryside where poverty-stricken masses are living. If some talented and hardworking person gets an opportunity to get good marks in matriculation, he fails to get guideline whether to opt pre-medical or pre-engineering. After passing intermediate examination, majority of those who fail to get admission in medical colleges or engineering institutions lack awareness about rest of the available career opportunities.

Mass media is the chief source of information but our media do not provide appropriate programs about career planning. Similarly, our educational institutions and instructors lack proper capacity to guide the upcoming generations about career planning. Thus lesser the opportunities to attain information about career planning, greater are the chances of frequent change of profession. “There is a saying that a person spends much more time choosing a car than a career.”

 In order to preserve state resources and for appropriate human resource development, the Developing Countries should establish career planning institutions by taking inspiration and guidance from the Developed Countries. Career planning can be included as subject in educational institutions to create consciousness among the students vis-à-vis significance of selecting a particular profession at early stage. Moreover, these backward states should launch a herculean media campaign for guiding the commoners to choose a vocation according to their bent of mind. By educating parents to let their offspring to take independent decisions in choosing a profession will develop self-confidence and self-reliance in the upcoming generations. The UDCs have failed to properly direct their youth in career planning. If they will continue to tread on the same indifferent path, they will not be able to make any headway in the welter of the contemporary melting pot.

Written by

Freelance International Columnist, Poet and Author of the Books “What Plagues Pakistan?” and “Live Balls of Fire”

A role model to follow

A role model to follow

Rarely if ever you find such people who along with giving you confidence about yourself also end up teaching you the real meaning of life. Having tasted much success in their respective careers, they remain down-to-earth and are available always to lend a helping hand whenever you happen to be in need of one. Prof Waqar Usmani is one such individual.

Young and dynamic, Prof Usmani’s name is symbol of success as well as pride for all the public and private educational institutions of Karachi that he is associated with. His method of teaching is very simple, yet effective, which helps draw a number of students towards his lectures.

In addition to teaching, Prof Usmani is also involved in student counseling as well as organising extracurricular events in various institutions. He is an active social worker, too. Though he teaches business administration, Prof Usmani also happens to be a lover of art and is a part of the research team besides being the co-editor of a research magazine on the subject.

The professor hails from a very well-educated family. As a senior teacher at the Islamia College Sukkur, his maternal grandfather made a valuable contribution towards the betterment of the educational system in Sukkur. “My elder brother Wahab Usmani is a PhD in software engineering from the NED University and is now teaching, too, at the same university,” he says.

As for Prof Usmani himself, after doing his graduation from Iqra University in 2000, he did his MBA from the Hamdard University followed by BCs from Petroman and MCs and MS also from Hamdard. At the moment, he is in the process of doing his PhD from Hamdard University.

With so many degrees under his hat, one wonders why he didn’t go abroad. The professor says: “I think only those people who do not get the opportunity in Pakistan go abroad. Besides, I had decided quite early in my career to not part with my land, its culture and the people I love. I wanted to serve my country in my field.”

So, is he satisfied with the current education system here?

“Look,” says the professor, “It’s an open fact. We cannot deny that the condition of education here is rather poor. It needs to be reformed on both the government and the private front. Student activities too should be according to the educational system that itself should be directed towards the sovereignty of the state. Then people too should be admitted to the different fields keeping in mind the concept of man power. However, I must also say that there have been signs of improvement in the last five years.”

On being asked whether the change that he has noticed could be due to the formation of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Prof Usmani said: “HEC was formed for the reform of educational institutions here and by implementing a rating system, it has carried out quite a few reforms in many private institutes. Still, I believe that there is room for improvement.”

When asked about his views Educationist

on the self-finance scheme and if it wasn’t but an injustice to merit, the educationist said: “The scheme is absolutely unacceptable as it reflects the distribution of class in the country.”

Being a product of private universities himself, Prof Usmani says that in his opinion, most of the private universities here have progressed in their performances. “But having said that I believe that making education commercial has caused much injustice to the larger potion of society that hails from the lower-income homes. They now view education as a dream.

“In addition the trend of buying degrees has also increased, unfortunately, with some institutions making selling degrees their core business, which is most regrettable,” he adds.

On the subject of student organizations the professor says: “I think it is quite democratic to have student organisations in educational institutions but if these organizations start resorting to unlawful means in order to have their demands met, then it becomes a dangerous activity for students.”

Finally, he says that the relation between the teacher and the student should be like that of a father and son.

“I’m lucky to have gotten that kind of respect from my students and I feel that respecting your elders is a habit which is passed down to you from your family. The younger lot should give the same kind of respect that they give to their parents and teachers to all the elders in their circle. And that’s how you make this world a better place to live in,” he concludes.

Publish in DAWN - Sunday, 30 Aug, 2009 http://tinyurl.com/23xhmbp