Thursday, February 9, 2017

Strategic decision-making at business schools stressed

The two-day National Business Education Accreditation Council Deans and Directors Conference ended at a local hotel on Wednesday calling for strategic decision-making and synchronisation of internal operations at business schools.

The event brought together more than 100 deans and heads of departments of the nationwide business schools for strategic level discussions on how to increase the quality of business education in the country.


During a session on the indigenisation of curriculum, Dr. Shaukat Brah, founding rector of the Karachi School of Business and Leadership, said business schools should do some soul-searching to figure out whether they’re producing good business professionals and what they should do to produce the persons required by the market.

“We need to produce the material, which the audience can relate with,” he said.

Dr. Shaukat also called for the active learning environment at business institutes. He said things had changed from passive learning to active learning over the years as currently, education was all about involving all stakeholders to bring perspectives of all those concerned to the classrooms.

“If you’ve one mind, one point of view, then you’re settling for complacency. And complacent nations can never be vibrant,” he said.

He said there was a need to create an environment encouraging students to challenge teachers to produce the best professionals. He called for the production of visionary leaders, who will act as effective agents of change and are capable of taking ownership of organisations.

“We need to teach our students what is attuned to local business environment and local economy,” he said.

Dr. Nauman Farooqi, dean of the Faculty of Sciences at the Mount Allison University, Canada, said local content and context mattered needed for curriculum. He said at times, professors in Pakistan tried to pose as know-all in classrooms and that was where the end began.

“We need to realise that in classrooms, we the teachers too are learners. We need to understand that we can learn from students, too. There must be a space for everyone to learn,” he said.

During other sessions, speakers discussed various aspects of business education in the country and suggested ways and means to promote it.

They also shed light on the best practices of students’ placement, challenges of governing structure in public sector institutions, how to address the key challenges for re-accreditation, and NBEAC accreditation: local vs global practices. Later, certificates were given away to the panelists.

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