PIDE conference: University-industry linkages remain fragmented despite investment: VC

ISLAMABAD: Despite substantial public investment in promoting higher education, the university-industry linkages in Pakistan remain fragmented, academic incentives remain narrowly publication-driven, and demand for evidence-based policymaking is uneven.

This was stated by Dr Nadeem Javaid, Vice Chancellor (VC) of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) while speaking at a conference organized by PIDE titled “From Knowledge to Impact: A National Leadership Dialogue”.

The VC PIDE further said that innovation ecosystems do not emerge by chance but must be deliberately designed through aligned incentives, enabling regulation, risk-tolerant financing, and coordinated leadership.

The participants of the conference agreed that Pakistan has significantly expanded its higher education and research base over the past decade, but the country continues to struggle in translating knowledge into tangible economic, industrial, and policy outcomes.

The PIDE VC emphasized that “Pakistan’s challenge today is not a shortage of universities or talent, but the absence of a coherent system that converts research and human capital into innovation, exports, productivity, and effective policymaking.”

Speaking on the occasion, Federal Minister for Planning, Development, and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal stressed the urgent need to transform Pakistan’s higher education system into a driver of national development, innovation, and economic growth, asking that universities must move beyond paper-based research to produce solutions with real-world impact.

The minister said Pakistan’s development visions, including Vision 2010, Vision 2025, and now Uraan Pakistan, reflected a consistent resolve to build human capital, despite repeated disruptions.

“We tried to move forward through Vision 2025, but it was disrupted. Now we are once again trying to move in that direction through Uraan Pakistan,” he said, adding that earlier initiatives had nevertheless laid the foundations of today’s higher education system.

Recalling his tenure during Vision 2010, Ahsan Iqbal said Pakistan faced an acute shortage of qualified faculty. “At that time, there were only around 350 PhDs in science and technology, and nearly 65 to 70 percent were close to retirement,” he noted.

To address this, he said, the government approved two major initiatives, including the overseas scholarship scheme for 5,000 PhDs and the indigenous PhD scholarship programme for another 5,000 scholars. “These 10,000 PhDs today form the backbone of our human resource base on which the system stands,” he said, adding that continuity of policy was critical for long-term gains.

The minister said higher education funding was also significantly enhanced during Vision 2025. “When we took charge, the Higher Education Commission was practically shut down, and its development budget was around Rs10 to 11 billion. Pakistan raised it to Rs45 billion and introduced major reforms to make higher education inclusive and competitive,” he said.

Explaining the reform agenda, he said a two-tier university system was envisaged: one focused on broad-based access and success, and another “premier league” of universities competing globally in advanced research and academic excellence.

He added that national centres in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, big data, cloud computing, quantum computing, and nanotechnology were also initiated.

Highlighting international collaboration, Ahsan Iqbal said programmes like the US-Pakistan Knowledge Corridor and the UK-Pakistan Knowledge Gateway were launched to bridge Pakistan’s human resource gap. “Our higher education participation rate is only 13 percent, compared to 25 percent in Bangladesh and 60 percent in China. This gap is holding back our expansion,” he said.

The minister expressed concern that much of Pakistan’s research remained confined to academic journals. “We suffer from what I call academic inflation. Papers are published, but ideas that can contribute to national development are missing,” he said, calling for a shift towards innovation, commercialization, and industry linkages.

He stressed that universities must become “innovation engines, startup launchpads and policy think tanks,” capable of addressing national challenges in agriculture, industry, and technology, while also producing ethically grounded and socially responsible citizens.

Ahsan Iqbal said the government was developing a seven-pillar performance audit framework for universities, covering academic excellence, research and innovation, industry linkages, community contribution, technology enablement, governance, and quality of graduates. “Our universities must transition into institutions of national development, and this transition has to be made in emergency mode,” he said.

The keynote address was delivered by Professor Kamal Munir, Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, UK, who offered global insights into how successful innovation ecosystems evolve.

Drawing on the renowned “Cambridge Phenomenon,” he explained that innovation flourishes where universities, industry, and government operate through porous boundaries rather than rigid silos. He underscored the importance of world-class basic research, entrepreneurial culture, institutional support for knowledge transfer, dense local networks of talent and capital, and light-touch intellectual property regimes that encourage collaboration and spin-offs. Infrastructure alone, he cautioned, does not create innovation—nor does government control guarantee creativity.

Through comparative examples from Cambridge, MIT, and Stanford, China, and Singapore, participants noted that while there is no single model of innovation, all successful ecosystems share common features: trust-based networks, talent mobility, patient and technically literate capital, regulatory flexibility, and sustained commitment to basic science.

Pakistan’s task, participants agreed, is not to copy any one model, but to design its own ecosystem aligned with national priorities, institutional realities, and regional strengths. Two leadership dialogue sessions focused on universities as engines of innovation and on designing Pakistan’s national innovation ecosystem.

Discussions examined how university impact should be assessed beyond rankings and publications, how linkages with industry and government can be institutionalized, and how incentive and promotion structures can be reformed to reward relevance, engagement, and problem-solving.

A concluding “Way Forward” session outlined actionable priorities, including leadership accountability, piloting innovation clusters, reforming intellectual property and engagement frameworks, investing in talent as core infrastructure, and strengthening coordination among universities, regulators, and policymakers to move decisively from intent to execution.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025