Category: Higher Education
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6 Trends that will Determine your Career Success in the 21st Century
There are six major trends that are going to determine the careers of graduates in the 21st century: Shortening of the life cycle of organizations and businesses. From life-long full-time employment to short term, contractual, project-based engagements From teaching to learning From knowledge acquisition to enterprising creativity and innovation From management to leadership. From managed…
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Who Fails when a Student Fails
Should not this be true also for schools? Are we willing to take responsibility of the failure of our students? We conveniently try to shift the blame to the student, or to his genetic intelligence, or to his learning disability, or to his psychological deficiency, or to his parents, or to his family, or to his…
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Nine (9) Dimensions of Ethical Leadership
[1] There are three competencies of a leader which are necessary to inspire the followers on the path towards the destination. These competencies serve as a beacon of hope and encouragement for the followers to overcome the hardships likely to be encountered on the way. These are (i) the loftiness of vision (nigah-buland), (ii) heart-touching…
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Mismatch of Curriculum with Realities at Stanford, MIT and other Ivory Towers
From ivory towers to realities By Dr Asad Zaman Published: June 28, 2015 Curriculum Mismatch with Real Life As MIT freshmen are wont to do, we were up way past midnight discussing big absorbing questions like the meaning of life. We realised that none of us had a clue and decided to ask our professors. A natural candidate…
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Time Management of Social/Marriage Events in Karachi: A Case Study of How to Create Social and Youth Impact
It was first week of May of 2014 and representatives of Youth Impact came to see me at CBM. I was impressed to meet the team. They talked about the impact that they wanted to create on the youth and through them. They told me about their experiential learning program in which they take the…
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Revamping Business Curriculum in Collaboration with Industry for Impact
The model followed in Pakistan in the design of curricula is basically based on rearrangements of popular course names that correspond to some established (typically foreign) text books. A typical university in Pakistan designs a program by copying and pasting course names from some of the foreign universities and prominent local universities, making a semester-wise…
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How to Create Impact on Society: A Case Study of Experiential Learning Intervention in a Course on Social Advocacy
It was around 2007-08, I was chatting with some top decision making executives of five private universities/institutes in Pakistan. As is customary in Pakistan, the discussion invariably turned towards lamenting the sorry state of affairs in Pakistan, how Pakistan is going down the drain and how its situation is increasingly becoming deplorable. After a while, I could…
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A Formula is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Dijkstra vs Buzan’s Mind-Maps
A Formula is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Dijkstra vs Buzan’s Mind-Maps Problems with Pictures with too many details and Complexity I had the opportunity to attend Tony Buzan’s presentation of his famous Mind-Maps at the convention of Management Association of Pakistan held at Karachi in September 2014. Mind-maps became popular in Pakistan some years ago thanks to their use for…
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Testing/Grading vs Motivation: A Variation on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle for Academics
Testing/Grading vs Motivation: A Variation on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle for Academics Whenever there is a discussion of the performance of students, lack of motivation of students is the most frequent complaint of nearly all the teachers, whether in higher education institutions or in schools, whether today or 20 years ago. Performance of students and hence…
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Why Project Based Learning? An Experiential Learning Case Study of Language Teaching
Why Project Based Learning? An Experiential Learning Case Study of Language Teaching This post describes a major step in my personal journey towards becoming an advocate of PBL approach, which is often referred to as “Learning by Doing” and is part of the “Experiential Learning” landscape. Please note that that the learning through this case…
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Pursuit of Excellence vs Guzara: How to teach excellence through everyday examples
This is late 1979, I had completed my intermediate, and my father had retired from his government job in Islamabad. We were moving back to Karachi from Islamabad via train in a reserved coupe of the economy class. The train system was already in a fast decline then. Gone were the days when the reserved…
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Why PhD is Difficult to Complete and Why there are so many ABDs and PhD Dropouts
After debunking the myth of what does it mean to be a PhD and PhD myths related to specialization and departmental scope of expertise, this post debunks two of the myths about the difficulty of PhD. These two myths are responsible for discouraging many to pursue a PhD: Myth 1: PhD is hard because doing…
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What does it Mean to Have a PhD: Myths of Specialization and Departmental Expertise
Following are the myths about the PhD degree that have created an aura of difficulty around the PhD degree that discourages many from undertaking the plunge. Myth: A PhD in your subject of specialization makes you the expert of the entire area i.e. department to which that subject specialization belongs. Myth: PhDs are department specific…
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13 Myths of Schooling and Education: Resources
Myths of Schooling and Education: Resources There are popular “Myths” about education and schools that have become a matter of unquestionable belief for a large section of population during the industrial age. See Changing Education Paradigms by Ken Robinson Many successful and great people have busted these myths through their own personal achievements, examples, research and successful…
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Why Education and Why Higher Education: Leadership in Life and Society
Why Education and Why Higher Education: Leadership in Life and Society 1. What is the Purpose of Education We grew up in schools where the day started with an assembly where everyone used to pray that the mission of our lives should be to become a source of light. We prayed for the capacity to…
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Of Hanafi School of Marketing, Orientation of New Students and Dr Matin A Khan of IBA
As my experience of dealing with students continues to accumulate, and as I closely observe how priorities of students change from what they are during their university studies to what they are in their later careers, I appreciate more and more the criticality and the importance of the two advices given by Dr Matin A…
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Why do our graduates want to leave the country? Curriculum’s Relevance to Social Impact
Curriculum’s Relevance to Social Impact: Why do our graduates want to leave the country? Why do our elite schools derive their prestige from the fact that their graduates get immediate placements in Western countries? Why do our highest performers of our universities consider their destiny to leave this country and build their life in well…
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Georgia – Lesson in Preserving Language, Religion and Culture
Skyline with Churches The first thing that strikes one in Tbilisi, Georgia is the love Georgians have for their language and their history and their resilience in maintaining their religious and cultural identity despite centuries of rule by foreign powers: Sign boards and billboards are all in Georgian, schooling is predominantly in Georgian, daily interaction…
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Fairness in Grading: A Lesson by the Great Dijkstra
Fairness in Grading: A Lesson by the Great Dijkstra In my another post “Beauty is Our Business: Mathematics and Dijkstra“, I describe how I came to be enrolled with Dijkstra at UT Austin in the course Capita Selecta and how he and his students understood the meaning of beauty and excellence. But, my intention of…
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Problems with Bloom’s Taxonomy: Impact on Curriculum and Motivation of Students
Problems with Bloom’s Taxonomy: Impact on Curriculum and Motivation of Students The basic problem with Bloom’s taxonomy is defining the learning process as a sequence of progression from simpler memory recall function to the supposedly higher levels such as synthesis and evaluation which as Frank Smith argues below is contrary to the actual process of…
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Lesser known dimensions of US Universities – Archives of history and literature
Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin Lesser known dimensions of US Universities – Archives of history and literature During my seven years at the University of Texas at Austin, I went a few times to Harry Ransom Center (HRC) which is an archive and a museum of art, literature and other historical documents. I now think,…
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Education as Tazkia: Is a child like a clean slate?
Education as Tazkia: Is a child like a clean slate? In the academic circles, one often hears the view of a child as “clean slate”, meaning there is nothing written on the slate, and unless we make sure that we write something “good”, as quickly as possible, others may spoil it by writing on it…
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What Inspires Me: Leadership Against All Odds
Jacqueline Novogratz CEO at Acumen Fund What Inspires Me: Leadership Against All Odds I may have to write several posts to answer this question. What inspires me? I think of beauty, generosity, a star-filled night to remind me of how connected we are in a vast universe – all of it inspires me. But let…
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Entrepreneurial Leadership for 21st Century
Entrepreneurial Leadership for 21st Century 21st century represents the information age and offers different challenges from the 20th century which represented the industrial age. The transition to the information age from the industrial age heralds specific challenges in the area of education and learning: Mass Production Assembly Lines are Out Need for assembly lines for the mass production of standardized supervisors, managers, engineers or…
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Why Job Security?
Why Job Security? Why we Search for Job Security. Why Not Risk Taking? Why are we so afraid of taking risks? Why our primary focus is on jobs that provide security? Why people go after a pensionable, secure, career job? Why people think that becoming a government “servant” is their ultimate goal? Why “sarkar ki…
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Four Legacies of a Leader: Which one would you leave behind?
Four Legacies of a Leader: Which one would you leave behind? There is a yearning in us to leave behind a legacy. Many focus on accumulating wealth and leaving behind property and bank balance. Others focus on their children and try to make them better than themselves. Leaders often think beyond themselves or their children.…
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How Parental Judgments can Shatter a Child: Self Fulfilled Prophecies
How Parental Judgments can Shatter a Child: Self Fulfilled Prophecies It is often said when you are dealing with children: “Treat them as you want them to be, not how they are!” Basically the driving force while the child is growing and learning is the “Future Potential” of the child and not his “Current State”.…
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Which Field with Great Scope Should My Child Choose: There is always a room at the top
Which Field with Great Scope Should My Child Choose: There is always room at the top I often see parents coming to me for guidance about the field that their son/daughter should choose that would have scope in the future. They want to know the field which would be in great demand so that when…