Consuldents has been launched in Pakistan with high ambitions. As a startup, we want to change the landscape of graduate education in Pakistan, making it more collaborative and industry driven than ever before.

But why do we want that? Let’s analyze the state of graduate education in Pakistan today. As recently reported for World QAU rankings, only four Pakistani universities have made it to the top 1,000 universities in the world. This is a dire situation. With country’s population of 220 million, only four universities are ranked worthy enough to represent us in top 1,000. Neither of which comes under Top 400.

Today, instruction in Pakistani universities has been taken as education and more often, the mere power of passing an examination has been taken as learning. Our graduate students often lack the skills of the 21^st century. For instance, most of the computer sciences graduates know how to code but very few know how to communicate, write, read and correspond effectively. The skills set of second tier graduate students are more questionable, not knowing much and not possessing skills that can be effectively used.

The situation is worsening in research and development. The academia liaises up with industry elsewhere around the world and comes up with innovative products and solutions. In the US, for instance, it is the Amazon’s, the Google’s and the Tesla’s that are the biggest funders of R&D projects, contributing to almost 66% of all R&D spending and working hand in hand with leading universities. In Pakistan, not enough is invested in R&D by top tier organizations. Our industry is happy in deploying projects that have already been researched but we have been below par in R&D spending, not spurring enough innovation and growth.

Almost all the R&D spending is undertaken by the government in Pakistan and thanks to the Ignite ICT R&D Fund for taking the lead, investments otherwise in R&D have dried up and have not been up to the mark. With little first-hand R&D exposure for our faculty and students, our academia has been mostly limited to the text books rote learning, which has been good enough for tutoring but not enough for learning, reasoning, rationalizing and innovating next generation of technological improvements.

With growing population, there are plethora of universities that have cropped up in the last ten years. In a true sense, there is a ‘learning providence’ if we count the number of universities operating but unfortunately, very limited translation of knowledge and research that can be used for beneficial reasons.

This is what Consuldents wants to achieve. We want to reinvigorate the R&D process, helping academia and industry collaborate on worthwhile assignments – not just freelancing in nature, say like blog writing or logo designing but something worthwhile, something beneficial and something major in technological improvement. We have started the process and have been quiet encouraged to see industry liaising up on projects such as smart grids, nano lending products, Fintech ideas that are worthwhile to collaborate with leading faculty and graduate students. At max, industry can only risk losing few thousand of rupees on a far down the road experimentation idea but if something worthwhile gets developed, the innovation might just turn into a next monetization machine.

We believe all masters were once a student. Why not collaborate with leading students of today (and Masters of tomorrow) who might come up with a cutting edge, innovative product. We know this is a hard path. This will gradually build up. When both academia and industry will realize that R&D is the cornerstone of any graduate education program and should be encouraged always. With Consuldents, we hope to see signs of dawn. May be a dim light of dawning reason. But spreading into a shining beam of innovation, progress and achievement in the long run.