Crow's Nest...

It is actually a sad thing to note that Pakistanis in essence lack an international outlook. In the global village we are just another nation who looks at everything from their own narrow perspective. One of the reason that comes to mind is the language barrier and little stress paid on learning one in Pakistani educational institutions. Language is a doorway to a new and different culture. Language is a plateform for information sharing. It is a way of expression. It is an effective way of cultural development and at the same time an effective tool for cultural development. We, as a Pakistani nation, do not interest ourselves with learning new and different languages. The result is that we end up knowing little concrete facts about the culture of the west that we so unintentionally admire all the time. Granted you can read translations and try and learn something about a society but that is a restricted form of learning. Granted that English is a global language and the...

Dinar Standard is the Economist of the Muslim World. It publishes the list of top 500 companies in the Muslim world. And it has recently published an article detailing the scientific research efforts in the Muslim world. The list is very interesting for me. Pakistan is ranked number 8 on the list out of fifty odd OIC countries when it comes to number of publications in the past 10 years. Turkey is ranked on the top and outwins Pakistan by a factor of ten. The only countries doing good on the list are either oil rich or secular. More interestingly when it comes to number of Publications from individual universities in the OIC world none of the Pakistani universities are listed in the top 25. It is especially disturbing for me since i used to think that we at AKU are doing some good work in getting our way forward in research. But to my astonishment neither AKU, nor LUMS are listed in the top 25 list. this tells me a lot about the quality of education that we Pakistanis have to suff...

Ivy league universities are considered the crown jewel of US educational system, worldwide. But the cost of educating children in in these universities has always been very high. Not anymore, says Harvard ; Yale and the rest follow suit . Now through Harvard's new revived financial assistance policies students belonging to the lower and middle income groups will have to pay around 10% of their family income on studying at Harvard. Yale has similar arrangements for its aspiring students. I have little idea if this is valid for international students as well. But then again there is no point in asking this question because i hardly know any international student who is not on financial assistance. Technorati Tags: education , harvard , yale , ivy league Powered by ScribeFire .