Students create portal to share research with foreign universities

Graduate dinner held to acquaint new professionals with the old.

KARACHI:

The “hardworking and street smart” students of Karachi University Business School (KUBS) have set up a network with foreign universities to share research.

KUBS graduates were joined virtually by international university correspondents at the Graduada, 2011 on Wednesday night. These correspondents have agreed to join the business school’s web portal and share information on education and research.

The event was held at the Pearl Continental Hotel. The corporate dinner is an annual feature of the department, which hosts the event to launch the graduate directory and to help new graduates meet market leaders and professionals. This year theme was “Connecting global excellence”. Amir Salman, who teaches sales and marketing at the department, said that the students are street smart, a main requirement for sales and marketing.

“Their management skills can be gauged from this event, which was completely arranged by them,” he said. So far, a university consultant from the UK and correspondents from universities in Turkey, Malaysia and Cyprus are on board and more are showing interest. They plan to carry out student projects and share digital libraries and curriculum with the foreign institutions.

KUBS was established in 2000 when the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) was declared an autonomous degree-awarding institution. It offers a number of programmes, including the BBA (Honours) over four years, MBA (morning 2 years and evening 3 years). Recently, it also started an MS/PhD programme while the MBA in Banking and Finance over two years is run jointly with the Institute of Bankers Pakistan (IBP).

On Wednesday, certificates were distributed among the KUBS graduates. Chairman Abdul Rehman said that students would be able to use the portal to exchange information on market research and field studies with international students.

Terming the project ‘exemplary’, Karachi University Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Pirzada Qasim Raza Siddiqui said, “mere traditional and higher education does not safeguard the future of Pakistan, but education based on research does”.

Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Saeed Shafiq said our economy was facing an annual loss of $50 million because of the war against terrorism. Unemployment and crime is rampant in the country and the financial deficit is being covered by the tax-paying business community and general public.

Arsalan Siddiqui, a Business Administration graduate, has already won admission to a university in the UK and is waiting for a job before he leaves for the session that starts in September.

Quite optimistic and satisfied with his credentials, he said that almost 85 per cent of marketing majors are already employed. He said there are plenty of openings in the market.

Meanwhile, finance majors are waiting for openings in banks. “We have a good reputation with banks and a lot of our graduates have already been hired at a starting salary of Rs30,000 at least,” he said.

The students know, however, that it is a tough, competitive world out there. With business graduates from LUMS, IBA and SZABIST among other universities, the relatively newer and less known KUBS students have to work extra hard to be seen. As a result, they have formed a society, Business Administration Student Society (BASS).

Huzaifa Inam and Mudassar Ghaffar, two students who were among the event organisers from BASS, said that the Graduada gives them an opportunity to meet industry professionals and learn from them the needs, trends and focuses of the market as well as make their presence felt in this highly competitive arena.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 22^nd, 2011.