Pakistan, 8% of education budget spent on higher studies: Atta

The government spends only eight per cent of total education budget, equalling 1.4 per cent of GDP, on higher studies, due to which the country has lagged behind in socio-economic development. In his lecture on `Education of Science and Technology for Socio-Economic Development,’ organised by Planning Commission for the eminent scientists and scholars, former federal minister and Chairman of Higher Education Commission (HEC) Dr Atta-ur-Rehman said the country could not afford any further cuts in budgetary allocations for science and technology. He suggested the government to incentives the private sector to invest in technology sector following the foreign models. He said it was unfortunate that the collective GDP of all OIC states was lesser than that of Japan, just because “we lag behind in science education as we could not set priorities”. “First of all, we will have to recognise that youth is the real asset of our country. Pakistan is rich of 85 million youths of below 19. So if we do not exploit talent, the country may suffer a lot,” said Atta-ur-Rehman. He said it was unfortunate that Pakistan was spending only 1.4 per cent of GDP on education out of which eight percent was allocated for higher education. He advised the government not to follow Sri Lankan syndrome where lower education was given priority. “The students should be developed as job givers, not job seekers because youths should be encouraged to establish small companies. MIT has created 4,000 companies with annual sale of $232 million,” he said. Dr Atta-ur-Rehman said Pakistan has been ranked 104th in Global Competitiveness and 83rd in availability of engineers and scientists, 80th in spending on research and development against 46 at India. Exemplifying Malaysian Model spending 25 per cent of GDP on higher education, he said from 2002 to 2007, the country had witnessed 6,000 per cent increase in science education and salaries of university teachers were increased to $5,000 but unfortunately the allocation was being reduced for the sector. Referring to a silent revolution in higher education, he said even an Indian advisor had suggested his Prime Minister to follow Pakistan’s model and added that if exploited well, the country could soon join China to challenge India in technology sector. Giving a roadmap, he suggested short and long term plans for 13 major sectors, including agriculture, textile, materials and others, stressing for incentivising the private sector to invest in research and development. In India, private sector spends 75 percent in research and development, 67 per cent in China but unfortunately in Pakistan it spends at only 5 per cent, putting rest of the burden to be borne by the government, he added. The former HEC chairman said there was a need to identify areas for investment and described education, science and technology, innovations and honest technologically competent leadership as pre-requisite for Socio-economic development of the country.