Pakistan to test students for real-world skills before they graduate from IT degrees
- Reference: 1770355335
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/02/06/pakistan_it_national_skill_competency_test/
- Source link:
The commission announced the National Skill Competency Test on Wednesday, and [1]told universities it’s needed “to align academic outcomes with the rapidly evolving demands of the global technology sector.”
Pakistan’s prime minister, Ministry of Technology and Telecommunication, Software Export Board, and Software Houses Association all supported the new exam, which students will sit towards the end of their degrees. The HEC has asked universities to ensure all students sit the test.
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Students who do well will be offered priority access to internships, apprenticeships, and industry certifications. HEC will rank universities based on their students’ performance on the test.
[3]
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The regulator is involved in the formulation of curricula used in Pakistan’s universities, so those rankings won’t necessarily reflect on each institution’s teaching choices, although it has clear potential to assess their effectiveness.
[5]Microsoft leaves Pakistan but promises customers won't notice the change
[6]Stop Pakistani content at the border, India tells media, tech biz
[7]Pakistan's tech lobby warns that slow internet is strangling IT industry
[8]Indian bank’s IT is so shabby it’s been banned from opening new accounts
HEC says the test is needed because it will help Pakistan’s technology industry.
Pakistan is the world’s fifth-most-populous nation, so has considerable domestic need for technology workers. The nation is also trying to establish itself as an exporter of technology services, an industry its government feels has enormous potential.
Part of Pakistan’s plan is to [9]encourage freelance technology workers to use gig work platforms to find offshore clients, a scheme that, as of 2020, the nation’s government once believed could bring in $5 billion of fees every year. That ambition proved unachievable, as by 2025 total annual IT services revenue was just $3.8 billion. By way of comparison, that’s less than any of India’s big four IT services companies – Infosys, HCL, TCS and Wipro – make in a year, while only Wipro earned less [10]in its last reported quarter .
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Educators, industry groups, and employers never stop arguing about how best to create job-ready graduates. Academics typically argue that understanding CompSci fundamentals means students can adapt to the needs of a workplace. Vendors argue that embedding courses on their technology in university curriculums means students can mix broad concepts with practical skills.
Pakistan is now putting those competing ideas – pardon the pun – to the test. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://iportal.riphah.edu.pk/rim/hec-announces-national-skill-competency-test-for-it-graduates/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aYXJ1PSaJC9w3xhO8DFPvgAAAdA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aYXJ1PSaJC9w3xhO8DFPvgAAAdA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aYXJ1PSaJC9w3xhO8DFPvgAAAdA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/03/microsoft_quits_pakistan/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/08/india_pakistan_content_block_advice/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/21/pakistan_tech_industry_fears/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/25/rbi_india_kotak_mahindra_bank/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/12/pakistan_it_export_ambitions/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/19/hcl_infosys_tcs_wipro_results/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aYXJ1PSaJC9w3xhO8DFPvgAAAdA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Interesting approach
Other professors. It’s called peer review.
Re: Interesting approach
It’s called peer review.
Just to clarify, do you mean " 'peer' (wink, wink, wink) review" or just plain "peer review".
Complete nonsense
The idea of aligning " academic outcomes with the rapidly evolving demands of the global technology sector " is a fool's errand. Why you ask? Two things: 1) rapidly evolving; and 2) technology sector.
It takes a long time, and effort, to properly learn, and endeavoring to instantaneously adapt that to the constantly shifting moving target of the industry needs weathercock will result in only one thing: entirely counterproductive confusion and hugeass wasted energy. Academia works only when it focusses on teaching students the solid principles that vary only very slowly over time (knowledge, science), plus endowing students with the ability for lifelong learning.
It's the responsibility of industry to train new hires into their stochastic and turbulent world of stuff that changes daily based on market dynamics and beliefs. But, clearly here, private profit-making industry snowflakes in Pakistan are complaining again about having to put in the effort for onboarding new young minds, and are trying to offload the related costs back to taxpayer funded academia and kids' parents. Well, that's a doggone shame from technology sector morons who can't make money without stealing it from taxpayers, imho!
We see it everywhere, worldwide, failterpreneurs with government friends who keep hoarding tax money meant for education, healthcare, and infrastructure. This has to stop, period!
Why IT?
> a competency test for students who take degrees in IT, to assess whether they emerge with skills employers will find useful.
I can think of many other degree courses that would benefit from such an assessment. Though maybe its application to IT hints at the subject's importance.
Not doing sandwich courses then?
Sandwich making?
How to make sandwiches could be useful as part of the training.
Re: Sandwich making?
Very useful when next year's graduates are "obviously better hires" because their practical course used Latest Fad #37 and your's only covered upto #31: yes, we are willing to bear the cost of retraining you for continued employment, here is your apron, paper hat and flat metal flippy thing, you are officially retrained, now shoo.
(I understand some strange people call a McBurger a "sandwich"!)
I've got mixed feelings about this, but if it pushes the universities into giving people the core skills they need in the real world it's probably a good thing.
Our degree course was very much based around learning the skills and knowledge of systems, architecture and programming; this was mostly in Pascal with small systems work in Assembler as they felt that if you know how to program you can pick up languages easily enough. It's stood me in good stead over the years and I'm still using techniques I learnt then over 40 years later, in that time I've programmed professionally in Pascal, Fortran, C, Visual Basic (and VBA and VBS), T-SQL, a little bit in Cobol, I've dabbled for myself in Forth and Python and there's probably some I've forgotten.
By chance I met a student on a train who was doing a similar course from a more prestigious University and we got chatting. It turned out that by the end of their second year they were expected to be proficient in about six different languages but only knew the same limited methods in each of those. Much of the more advanced stuff we'd done simply passed them by. Sadly in terms of initial employment he'd win out every time, "I'm from xxxx and I know Fortran, Cobol, Pascal, etc." When it came to actually doing the work he wouldn't have much clue.
Interesting approach
I have one question : who is going to test that the professors know what they're testing for ?