Academia and industry in Pakistan: two planets speaking different languages

Business Recorder

07-05-2025

I still vividly recall the days of 2011 when I enrolled in a French language class at Lahore's National University of Modern Languages (NUML). Studying the world's fifth most popular language was an enjoyable experience.
The rules of the language are different from English, with many conjugations and a rich vocabulary with words having strange accents. I enjoyed the taste of this new language. After about 14 years, I can remember only a few words and rules of the French language, as I could not practice French in Pakistan. And that's not unusual.
Since I joined academia in 2017, I started to learn another language used exclusively in academia. The language of course and program learning objectives, academic writing, publications, research proposals, and funding proposals. During an academic semester, faculty is busy with preparing and marking quizzes, assignments, exams, and projects. This isolated ecosystem operates in its own linguistic and functional domain as an academic semester is replete with the activities in the language of academia, and one living in this ecosystem gets an occasional chance to meet with the people speaking the language of industry.
The title of a book has always attracted me: 'Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.' The title resonates much with the current situation of academia and industry; both are living on different planets, at least in Pakistan.
In developed countries, a common habitat is established and nurtured. Both parties can coexist, interact, and cooperate there. But in a country like Pakistan, there is no common habitat; they continue to live on their own planets and speak their languages.
Despite a strong will and desire to create a common habitat for industry-academic interaction, there are no remarkable success stories. Both planets, while orbiting around the sun (symbolizing the government), rotate in their orbits and only sometimes get an opportunity for alignment. On such rare occasions, academia and industry meet, perhaps in a conference or collaborative discussion. These meetings are usually cordial, filled with attempts to understand each other's perspectives. But as quickly as they arrive, these moments pass, and both return to their respective silos and get busy in their operations.
Depending on its current priorities, the government may step in as an intermediary and catalyst at this moment of alignment. In developed countries, the two coexist within a shared ecosystem. The so-called triple helix model exists and thrives there, while in developing countries like Pakistan, only the jargon is used without any meaningful action plan.
I met an industry guy a few days back. He was originally from the planet Academia but jumped to the planet Industry once both planets aligned. He candidly remarked that academia in Pakistan is not only bogged down in activities purely related to semester work but also happy to remain in this cycle. Since the industry in Pakistan is not thriving, academia gets a valid excuse for not leaving the planet.
On the other hand, the industry is busy tackling their productivity issues and expects solutions to their problems instantaneously without feeling the need to invest in research and development. They don't trust academia, and academia doesn't bother to endure the pain of talking a foreign language and going to unfavourable territories. The government often tries to create a middle ground but unfortunately has a lot of other unnecessary tasks always at hand, putting industry-academia linkage on the back burner.
The Higher Education Commission (HEC) in Pakistan launches many funding opportunities for academia, including the National Research Program for Universities (NRPU), Grand Challenge Fund, Technology Transfer Fund, etc., with an essential requirement to have industrial partners to qualify for the fund. Academia, to fetch these opportunities, tries to learn and speak the language of industry and tries to understand their problems.
But it is startling to know that there is no tangible, verifiable, and bankable record of the contribution of academia towards solving the industrial problems, even with HEC. If there are any success stories at all, the record is generally not made public because of insecurities and so-called breaches of information.
In a massive effort by the government of Pakistan, multiple National Centres of Excellence (artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, cybersecurity, robotics and automation, etc.) were inaugurated in 2017 to make a common habitat for academia and industry. After years of inception and work, clear and verifiable results are not known to either academia or industry. There might be some success stories, but no breakthrough and grandeur tale to tell. The majority of academia continues to speak their language and refuses to switch to the other.
Industry complains about academicians' bookish approach, and academia complains about industry's non-cooperative behaviour and demand for solutions overnight. The government enjoys looking at both parties blaming and tries to provide some opportunities to both whenever it gets a relief from other pressing matters in the name of reviving the Triple Helix model.
The story continues without much result, as Pakistan ranks 91st in the Global Innovation Index, and the top university ranks 315th in the world QS ranking of higher education institutes. While standing at the 110th position in the Global Competitiveness Index, if Pakistan wants to excel, a few essential steps might be as under:
• Academia needs to understand the importance of understanding the language of industry and should not abstain from learning it.
• Academia needs to come out of its comfort zone and match the expectations of industry, especially during the summer semester, when faculty may get some time from their regular academic routine. Current industry placement programmes for faculty by the universities are not enough to make it happen.
• Industry should establish connections with academia and share their problems while continuing to get quick-fix solutions from abroad to solve their immediate problems until a local solution is available.
• The government should accord priority to act as a catalyst for industry-academia linkage if Pakistan's academia and industry fail to speak and understand each other's languages, the country risks slipping so far behind the global innovation curve, that catching up may one day become an impossible dream.
(The writer is a professor at the Department of Engineering Management, NUST)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025