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‘Quality education should be our national priority’
IN 1982, a young Pakistani computer science professional joined a fledgling database company, then known as Relational Software. As the company’s first sales consultant, he was to launch a sales organization covering 13 states. The company grew into Oracle Corporation, one of the leading suppliers of information management technology, including the databases, application server and tools. The Pakistani engineer, Sohaib Abbasi, became its Senior Vice President for Tools Development and Education divisions.
Abbasi is one of the Pakistani icons in the field of information technology. He is listed in the Corporate Yellow Book and The Leadership Library® on the Internet.
Abbasi bid farewell to Oracle in February this year and now he aims to devote his professional expertise to improve the quality of education, particularly in the field of computer science, in Pakistan.
Lahore-born Sohaib Abbasi had his school education in Karachi. Then he left for the United States where he did his BS in 1978, and MS in 1980, with honours, from the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Committed to foster talented Pakistanis in the computer field as well as to help Pakistan’s technological growth, Abbasi and his wife, Sara, established the “Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professorship” and the “Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Fellowship” in their alma mater’s department of computer science (see Box).
Recently, Sohaib and Sara Abbasi were on a visit to Pakistan to explore venues to realize their dream of improving the quality of education in their home country. He shares, below, his dreams with the Dawn ScienceDotcom readers:
After having left Oracle in February, what specific plans do you have for the future?
Our goal is to improve education in Pakistan, essentially in three ways: one is to improve the quality of computer science education in Pakistan; the second is to improve primary education in Pakistan; and the third is to improve the education of Islam and the Muslim countries in the world. These are the three specific areas we are involved in.
I have met with several educational institutions offering computer science curriculum in Pakistan. My goal is to identify the premier computer science institutions, and the explore ways in which I can contribute to it. At present these possibilities include: one is to establish scholarships for students, based primarily on financial needs as well as merit; the second is having an endowed share to improve the faculty in those institutions; and the third is by establishing potential wings with US institutions.
I have already met with several institutions already in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. They include FAST, UET and LUMS. I also met someone from GIK, though unofficially. In Karachi, I have met with officials from NED, KU and IBA. There are some more institutions that I am going to meet.
As a software expert, how do you view the present software scenario in Pakistan?
My belief is that Pakistan has a great potential of playing a bigger role than it has historically played in information technology. In fact, Pakistan today is not even regarded as a player worldwide in information technology. The numbers I have seen suggest that the size of the market over here is about 60 million US dollars, which is, frankly, insignificant.
I’ve had several meetings with different Pakistani administrations in the past - in fact, three separate administrations over the last eight years, and I can say that I have not seen big improvements in terms of software market. It still remains in infancy as it has over the last eight years. So the potential Pakistan has remained unrealized.
The only way Pakistan will realize this potential is by focusing on education. There are two ways we could actually say we could improve education: one is to start yet another university; the other is to look at the possibility if a university already there can improve the quality of their education.
About three years ago I looked at starting a new university affiliated with the University of Illinois, specifically to let students sitting in Pakistan study and get degrees from that university without having to go there. After pondering over the proposition for some time, I decided that this was not the most attractive way and, instead, it would be more appropriate to strengthen some of the existing universities already having all the infrastructure facilities. That would also give us the economy of scale. My goal, therefore, is simply to identify the premier institutions teaching computer science in Pakistan, and then partner with them to see how it can be done - whether by establishing a scholarship system, by strengthening the faculty or by affiliating it with a US-based university. That would be the first step towards improving the standard of computer science in Pakistan.
What was the response of the government officials you met?
They have been asking about the possibility of an organization like the Oracle setting up an education institution in Pakistan. My answer to them is that there is no impelling reason for multinational to pick Pakistan over so many other countries with whom to launch such a venture. It’s because other countries have done so well in information technology.
The emerging markets for US software companies is the Eastern European countries that already have a strong education base in subjects such as mathematics, and have software backgrounds.
I think it is premature for Pakistan to be able to convince US companies to build their organization here. In fact the first step for Pakistan would be to improve the standard of education.
How can Pakistan cope with the perennial problem of the lack of a proper faculty?
There are only two ways that I know. One is to provide sufficient incentives and the right environment to attract world-class faculty members. Recently, I have met several world-class computer science experts still working in Pakistan for a variety of reasons. The other way is to have virtual links to use the internet to get faculty members maybe elsewhere in the world to be able to train the students over here.
Can we use the model of MIT’s OpenCourseWare technology in Pakistan?
I have met with President of MIT when they announced the OpenCourseWare programme. According to what he told me, the motivation for the MIT to introduce OpenCourseWare was that MIT takes great pride in how in the 1950s they produced sufficient number of PhDs that, in fact, influenced all of the institutions all over the US.
The goal behind OpenCourseWare was that MIT now wants to have a similar impact globally. It would certainly be a great feeling for them that IT experts in countries such as India, Pakistan and other countries have all been trained by MIT. So their first step is to have some of their CourseWare available free of cost. I think they have a five-year or ten-year plan before they have all of their courses available online.
Now, the question is what’s the environment in which the students are going to interact? In my opinion MIT OpenCourseWare is not sufficiently interactive.
This discussion brings us again to the basic question: how are we going to bring home our own faculty.
The big challenge is to provide the appropriate environment and the incentive. In fact it’s a combination of the two. And I think it is possible. The LUMS has been the most successful so far in this regard. They have not only provided the financial incentive but have also the appropriate incentive to attract the world-class faculty members to Pakistan.
It all depends on how we create the right environment and the incentive that joining a Pakistani institution becomes the natural choice.
You have mentioned LUMS as the best computer science university in Pakistan. Wouldn’t you like to pay some attention to Karachi, which also needs to have an institution like LUMS?
I would have loved to contribute to improvement in the quality of education in Karachi, but so much depends on the provincial government’s initiative.
The reason that education institutions in other cities are doing so good is that the provincial governments in those areas have set their priorities right, and are focusing on improving the quality of education there.
When I was with Oracle, it took only weeks to set up training institutions in Lahore because the Punjab government took practically no time to make the decision. Oracle trained and certified more than 1500 people were trained within months in Lahore.
On the contrary, the government of Sindh has been dragging its feet for years and it is yet to come up with a decision.
What sort of cooperation do you expect from the Sindh government?
I have met with the governor of Sindh and although I do not represent Oracle any longer I made him aware that the Oracle representative is still very eager on the training and certification initiative. The governor instructed some of the people in his staff to follow up. Now, only the time will tell if we get any results.
The room was getting crowded with visitors from different educational institutions — the University of Karachi, the Institute of Business Administration, and FAST. They were there to discuss education matters with Sohaib Abbasi.
With so many professionals taking serious interest in improving the quality of education in Pakistan, the future of information technology here appeared to hold big promise.
The writer
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