PSEB Chief Executive Officer Faisal Jeddy, along with Chief Skills Development Officer Dr. Henna Karamat Durrani and the PSEB team, held a meeting with Higher Education Commission Chairman Prof. Niaz Ahmad Akhtar to discuss ongoing initiatives aimed at strengthening Pakistan’s information technology workforce and digital talent ecosystem.
The discussion centred on enhancing opportunities for IT students, strengthening academia-industry linkages, and promoting industry-aligned skills development, with both sides exploring avenues for deeper collaboration between HEC and PSEB to support Pakistan’s growing digital economy. The meeting reflects a continuation of efforts to close the gap between what Pakistan’s universities teach and what the country’s expanding technology export sector actually requires, a gap that has been the subject of growing policy attention following the National Skills Competency Test results showing that the overwhelming majority of computing graduates fall short of industry-ready benchmarks.
PSEB and HEC reaffirmed their commitment to fostering a future-ready workforce through strategic partnerships, innovation, and greater alignment between academia and industry. With Pakistan’s information technology exports projected to cross $4.5 billion this fiscal year and the government targeting $15 billion by 2030, the collaboration between PSEB, the body responsible for promoting and regulating the IT export industry, and HEC, the regulator overseeing university curricula nationwide, represents a structural alignment between the institutions that shape talent supply and the institutions that represent talent demand, a coordination that has historically been one of the more persistent weaknesses in Pakistan’s technology workforce development pipeline.
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