Need for inter-universities collaboration

Though late, yet there is an approach gaining much ground that there must be an integrated initiative not only to effectively tackle the radical issues like environment change, science and technology progress, industrialization, reforms in agriculture system and information technology but also put the country on the right path to progress. However, these achievements can be possible only after proper utiliation of human skills, natural resources as well as enhancing collaboration between the higher education institutions and universities of the country. What the developed world has so far progressed in these sectors is the result of several decades old inter-universities collaboration and close liaison between educational institutions and industry executives. Collaboration means working with each other to do a task and to achieve shared goals. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals. It is a fact that teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward. Pakistan despite it meager resources is making efforts to come at par with the developed world. Several Pakistani universities have entered collaboration with a number of world educational institutions, which is a significant achievement. However, most of the local universities have yet to bridge this gap between them in terms of developing strong collaboration and initiation of research projects. It is an unarguable fact that strengthening research collaboration is important in order to meet the big challenges confronting Pakistan such as climate change, threats to biodiversity, infectious disease and declining agriculture, in addition to attracting links with the best scientific talent to the world of innovations. While on the other hand, lack of reasonable allocation of budget of universities has so far emerged as one of the bottlenecks of weak inter-universities collaboration. Most of them hardly provide funds to their research teams in undertaking research collaboration or develop their internal management capabilities. The government at this stage needs to play a patronizing role and support research and academic initiatives to promote a culture of collaboration between all local universities as it would help in developing a strong base for sustainable progress and an environment of healthy competition among students. At the same time, the industrial sector can also take the lead in setting aright the path of RandD initiatives based on their future needs.