Abstract:

Education and training are central part of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to end poverty and inequality. Pakistan has 60% of its population below 30 years of age where almost 80% of Pakistan’s youth in the labor force has low education attainment level and a poor skills base. To address this, our team has organized a conference in a rural area in Pakistan and brought together academic experts, industry partners and government personnel to see how industry academic gap can be bridged so that job ready graduates can be produced. Having experience in West, especially UK higher education system, gives majority of us exposure to the model of degree apprenticeships where curriculum is designed hand in hand with Industry partners to develop knowledge, skills and behaviours in an individual required by the industry. We proposed the model of degree apprenticeships in Pakistan to establish the collaboration between industry and academia in Pakistan and to enable students to access affordable higher education (HE) degrees that are relevant to the sustainable development and growth of engineering and business enterprises across Pakistan. The proposal of degree apprenticeships was well received by the key stakeholders including academics, government officials and Industry partners and currently under discussion as in how this can feed towards creating a national policy.

Keywords:

Degree apprenticeships, University-Industry collaboration.