“Education is never wasted and for Pakistan to prosper, education must be the topmost priority of the government,” says Dr Shaukat A. Brah.

His statement might strike one as sheer rhetoric but a glance at his credentials states otherwise. Hailing from Lahore with a PhD from University of Houston, Dr Brah is a Professor of Operations Management and Dean of Karachi School for Business & Leadership (KSBL). He was the former dean of the Suleman Dawood School of Business, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan, and also served as the dean of College of Business Studies, Al Ghurair University, United Arab Emirates. His longest stint however has been at the National University Singapore (NUS) Business School where he taught for over 16 years and keenly observed the educational trends in the thriving metropolis.

Talking about how things must be changed in Pakistan for the benefit of the people, he says there are two ways to go about it. “You can either go for revolution or for evolution. Obviously revolution involves a lot of pain but in the long run it’s always evolution that pays off,” he said.

Explaining why he favours evolution, he says: “I am an optimist and see the glass half full. I believe that taking small steps is the way to go. Blessed with a good leadership, a country can become prosperous. For instance, you build a road and everything follows be it education or economic prosperity.”

Giving the example of Karachi, he says that the city by the sea has a life of its own. “Port cities are most vibrant in the world, just for the simple reason that there is an influx of people from different backgrounds and ethnicities and the exchange of ideas leads to positive changes. Two years of good leadership is all it takes for change to come.”

Moving back on the subject of education in Pakistan, a country where the total spending on education was a mere 2.37 per cent according to a World Bank report published in 2012, Dr Brah says that education is a basic right. The government must ensure that each and every child receives primary education.

“The state needs to worry about primary education and let the market forces decide higher education,” he says, adding that Centres of Excellence (CoE) are needed in the country.

“CoE raise the bar for education and people do feel privileged and make extra effort to improve. There is the added incentive and motivation there,” he explains, adding that the CoE model in Pakistan has proven to be successful and the graduating students have done remarkable well.

“It also makes more sense to empower women, too, and how do you do that? You educate them,” he added.

When asked as to why the number of women in formal employment was dismally low and many bright female graduates opted to become housewives, not only wasting good education but also money paid from the public exchequer, he said: “My mother’s generation 50 years ago had the option of sitting at home and raising children. For women in my generation, working was an option, a choice they controlled but now things are very different.”

“The next generation will not have an option to relax and sit back. One income is not enough and you will see more and more women joining the workforce.” He further went on to clarify that a large number of women were already part of the workforce in the rural and urban sector, be it the cotton pickers, field workers, domestic help in cities or home-based workers but sadly their exact number remains undocumented.A father of two young boys, Dr Brah says that parents need to trust their children so that they can make their own choices. “Very often parents will push their children towards subjects that are of their choice and do not allow the child’s capabilities to flourish. I have seen students at interviews who say that they took up such and such courses because their parents wanted them to and they [students] feel decidedly uncomfortable.”

He insists that empowering a young person to make his decision always has positive results.

He went on to add: “Pakistan has its fair share of bright young people. Step outside Karachi and you’ll come across brilliant students from all sorts of backgrounds. All we need to do is groom them and give them opportunities.”

Describing the Karachi Education Initiative (KEI), he informed that the not-for-profit entity was established by a group of businessmen. KEI’s first project is KSBL which aims to become one of the premier institutions in the country. In partnership with the Cambridge Judge Business School, KSBL is currently offering MBA and will be expanding to offer BBA in various disciplines in the near future.

“The idea is not just to produce business graduates but rather leaders for the future,” says Dr Brah. When probed whether the school will eventually become an education export promotion zone and further worsen the brain drain situation, the dean brushes aside this notion. Citing himself as an example, he says: “I studied in Pakistan and then went abroad for further studies. I lived and taught there for two decades but then eventually I came back.”

“When one is 20-something, one is in the career mode. When one is in his fifties, that’s the time when the legacy mode begins, where one thinks what they will leave behind and ones contribution to society,” he summed up.