#Food4Thought: If you are, or were, a faculty member at any university in Pakistan, how much stake have you given to your university?

Traditionally, professors in Pakistani universities are not considered to be very progressive. Rather, their persona is that of a person who would be bookish and not linked to the applied/business world in any possible way.

But this is a status quo that needs to change. It is very important to encourage faculty members to initiate their own ideas and translate them into full-fledged startups. This not only benefits faculty members, giving them realtime and applied industry knowledge, but also helps establish a continuous stream of endowment for their universities. A culture of innovation and creativity will be the game changer in the Pakistani education system.

Take into consideration the model used at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This model entails that most professors employed at MIT, launch their own businesses while teaching. Within this model, there are two types of professors: ones who take ideas, nurture them and make them into businesses while taking the backseat once it is established and others, such as Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, owners of the renowned online learning platform Coursera and MIT faculty members, who take an active seat with their business and in some cases, even give up their teaching jobs.

Though there is a clear divide between them, both kinds of systems are equally important. The benefit of backend owners is that through developing their ideas into complete businesses and handing them over to known team members, they bring a lot of innovation in the classroom through their industry links. But one disadvantage about them is that they usually don’t become endowment funds for their universities because their stake in businesses is very less.

Frontend owners, on the other hand, through the help of university equity funds, do become endowment funds for their universities. If successful, universities receive cash dividend as well as a share in the company, helping them make millions of dollars and afford heavy expenditures. These equities range between 2.5-10% as per the facilities given by the university itself.

In Pakistani universities, this is exactly what is needed. At our higher education platform, we don’t have funds available, therefore we have to encourage these go-getter faculty members to come forward and give equity to universities while having professors on the tenure track and giving them the status of executive residence. This not only ensures the flow of money into the universities, but also does not give them the hassle of having to hire new and competent faculty members, should these leave. In addition to this, they can also house them at the university’s incubation centres and keep track of the progress the startups are making from a slower vantage point.

If every university in Pakistan was to adopt this model, including not only business professors but also engineers, doctors, researchers and individuals from other departments, our educational institutions would be independent in every aspect.

Moreover, the government of Pakistan can also start playing a role to make the transition easier. Along with providing a research and development fund and they can also introduce a startup development fund. It is important to keep in mind that this fund would be competition based and KPI-driven, while providing very clear guidelines on professors leading these projects.

Most professors in Pakistan aren’t on a tenure track and they aren’t doing any research but rather they are practitioners who come from a solid background, with a high chance for bringing the required robustness to any startup.

It is this exact culture that needs to be brought into universities all over Pakistan.

As the owner of a startup myself, when I started my business, I was very clear that EDTech Worx (EDTW) needs to become an endowment fund for my university, LUMS. As of today, the equity LUMS gets from my company is 2.5% and the value will keep increasing as the EDTW brand grows and footprint expands.

Startups that begin from university faculty members also end up becoming their biggest employers. For example, at EDTW, 90% of the employees are LUMS students. During COVID-19, a time period when many tech companies were not hiring new individuals, EDTW has hired an additional 12 fresh LUMS graduates, creating a placement hub for the university and a point in time where employment opportunities were scarce.

In the past 6 months, growth at EDTW has multiplied 300 times what it once was and it is growing startups such as this which act as a hotplate for fresh graduate employability and funding for university expenditure.

If the Pakistani educational setup wants to join the race in becoming one of the best hubs of education and innovation internationally, they need to bet on those faculty members who are willing to innovate as well as provide them with the encouragement and motivation to pursue their ideas to the fullest.

#Food4Thought: If you are, or were, a faculty member at any university in Pakistan, how much stake have you given to your university?