The educated in Pakistan are not a very diverse lot. Most of the students nowadays study business-related majors and even those who don’t often end up in corporate careers. Very few pursue liberal arts and other programmes, partly because there aren’t many ready-made career paths that they would want to follow after graduation.
I grew up at a time when the MBA had captured the imagination of a certain cohort of parents and youth. Prior to that, the fields of medicine and engineering were the absolute favourites. The societal pressure to choose only from a select few of education and career paths is bound to have some impact on what our society is shaped into. Although things are changing now — new educational and career opportunities are emerging — the majority of the university-going population in Pakistan is still unable to make a largely independent choice.
The fact that only a tiny minority of Pakistanis get the opportunity to pursue higher education makes their choice of major even more important. Yet, to this day, most higher-education choices and by extension career choices, are not made by the young minds that will inherit the socioeconomic challenges of the future, but by circumstances and societal pressures.
The economy plays a vital role in curtailing our choices. One has to, for example, sacrifice enormously more in Pakistan than in a first-world economy to pursue a career that generally does not pay well. Say, you want to be a sociologist and not an engineer as your parents wish. If this were Norway, you probably would have chosen the career that offered life-long personal and job satisfaction, work that you found meaningful. In Pakistan, however, the differential is too great, the pay scales too wide apart, to allow for such luxury.
A significant share of the blame also goes to our culture and the ensuing societal pressures. Obedience and conformity are values almost intrinsic to Pakistani society. “How dare you make decisions on your own, without involving me, your parent?” they seem to ask. This is, after all, a society where unmarried men and women in their twenties, and sometimes beyond, live with their parents and are often referred to as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ in colloquial speech.
New ideas, for better or worse, emerge from within the educated circles of society. Unless our leading universities start churning out graduates in literature, philosophy, sociology, statistics, law, ethics, political science and psychology, our educated elite will continue to have a very myopic world view.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 29th, 2014.
COMMENTS (8)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
In my time all those who couldn't make it to medical and Engineering had to per force take arts ... i.e. economics, finance etc. basically they were considered "nehlay" ... Psycology, philosophy etc. were the subjects for girls in BA who were to get the degree and get married asap !!! then came the MBA craze ... now we have so many MBAs who cannot even put a simple english sentence together ... and I guess now a days our society is going through the "CA" craze ...
I would agree with Hamid on this one. There are many individuals with advanced degrees in Philosophy and Arts working in Starbucks, McDonalds and driving taxis around the world. These may be good subjects, but unfortunately have limited use in the economy. I would suggest people keep them as a personal interest if they want to, but also spend time developing other skills. Not just MBAs or Engineering but also IT for example, where all the growth is taking place at the moment.
@Hamid:
A liberal arts degree is not a professional degree - it's for personal enrichment, which is exactly what a university education was meant to be before universities got into the business of 'selling' degrees. I realize that for most people in Pakistan a liberal arts degree is financially not feasible and there are very valid reasons for pursuing a professional degree that will help you in the job market, but this attitude that "an education is only worth the job it gets you" explains largely why our society is in the rot that it is in and it needs to be changed.
Its all about opportunity and the skills you learn from your academic life. The world is big enough to get hired.
Engineers dont earn millions in pakistan .. see the unemployment rate in engineers and speak
skills. the world over skilled workers are in demand. in pakistan people are not skilled because its considered beneath them, they want to sit in a office and be a saab.
During my 10 years in New York, I regularly encountered taxis drivers that had advanced degrees in 'literature, philosophy, sociology, law, ethics, political science and psychology'. There are very few job opportunists for the liberals arts graduates around the world. Just think about it, which industry or factory needs graduates in philosophy or literature? If you want a good paying career after you graduate better stick to engineering or medicine or comp. sci. Engineering is especially the most versatile and resourceful. Most entrepreneurs have an engineering background. Anything else and you will be driving a taxis too.