Pakistan Software Export Board has announced that over 3,358 candidates from 79 cities and 126 universities across Pakistan have successfully completed the INSPIRE entrance test, conducted by NED University of Engineering and Technology, marking a significant milestone in the country’s semiconductor human resource development journey under the Prime Minister’s National Semiconductor HR Development Plan.
The scale of participation in the INSPIRE test reflects a growing awareness among Pakistan’s student and young professional community of the opportunities being created through the government’s push into semiconductor education and chip design. Spanning 79 cities, the test’s geographic reach goes well beyond the major urban centres, suggesting that interest in the semiconductor field is not confined to traditional technology hubs but is distributed across a much wider cross-section of Pakistan’s academic population. The involvement of 126 universities further underlines the breadth of the initiative, with institutions from across the country sending candidates through the formal entrance process.
The INSPIRE programme sits within the broader framework of Pakistan’s ambition to build a domestic semiconductor talent pipeline, a goal that the Ministry of IT and Telecommunication and PSEB have been actively pursuing through structured training, international partnerships, and targeted upskilling initiatives. NED University’s role as the conducting institution lends the entrance test academic credibility and positions one of Pakistan’s leading engineering institutions at the centre of the country’s semiconductor human capital strategy. With the entrance test phase now complete, attention turns to the next stages of the programme, as the selected candidates move forward in what PSEB has described as Pakistan’s journey toward becoming a global semiconductor powerhouse, built one test, one chip designer, and one trained engineer at a time.
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