Zahid Maqbool, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) has stressed the need for establishing a strong partnership between the academia and the industry, which would help students better understand the applicability of theoretical studies in the real world.

He was speaking as the Chief Guest at the closing ceremony of two-day COMSATS Engineering Project Exhibition (CAPEX) 2010. He said Pakistan was blessed with plenty of talented youth and universities could play a major role in transforming this huge critical mass into a highly valuable resource for the country by equipping it with latest knowledge and technical education.

He said developed countries have achieved phenomenal economic progress by providing quality education to their young generations and there was no short cut for Pakistan except for imparting its youth modern education, especially in the fields of engineering, science and technology.

He said Pakistan’s population was increasing rapidly and country needs large number of engineers, scientists and technicians to put the economy on the path of sustainable development. Therefore, government should allocate more budget to education sector as the current budget allocation for education was far below the international standards.

He lauded the efforts of COMSATS for organizing a national level engineering projects exhibition which brought the academia, students, scientists and industrialists on a common platform which will help in bridging the gap between academia and industry.

He said organizing such exhibitions should be a regular feature of universities’ activities as it will groom the creative talent of students. It will also boost up the confidence of students besides providing them good opportunities of showing their talent in the field of engineering and technology by displaying their projects to the interested organizations.

Karim Aziz Malik, Vice President ICCI also appreciated COMSATS efforts and invited the student to demonstrate an industrial unit model at his industry. He further suggested that such an exhibition should also be organized at ICCI so that business community could know about the competence of our students and could offer them opportunities in their business establishments.

The universities that participated in the event included Bahria University, APCOMS, NUST, UET Taxila, Comsats, Iqra University, UET Lahore, AQ Khan Institute Kahuta, International Islamic University, University of Arid Agriculture and Federal Urdu University while many organizations also participated in the event.