HARIPUR: In order to promote high quality technical education infrastructure at tertiary level and a high technology industry, the Pak-Austria Fachhochschule: Institute of Applied Science and Technology is being established in Mang area of Haripur district at an approximate cost of Rs 8.2 billion.
Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pervez Khattak is expected to formally inaugurate the project.Admissions would hopefully be offered from the next academic session. The project, however, would be completed in seven years, said Dr Nasser Ali Khan, vice-chancellor of Haripur University and the project director while talking to The News.
He added that the departments of mechatronics, industrial process engineering, multi-media studies, applied computer sciences, medical technologies, energy-environment-engineering, electrical engineering and civil engineering would be established at the institute.
A steering committee under former chairman Higher Education Commission, Professor Dr Attaur Rahman has been formed for execution of the project. Dr Nasser Ali Khan would be the secretary of the committee while Prof Dr Sohail H Naqvi, Prof Dr Haroon Ahmad of Cambridge University, Prof Dr A Min Tjoa, coordinator from the Austrian side would be the members of the committee.
The vice-chancellor said that the project would have both short-term and long-term objectives. Both undergraduate (four-year) and graduate (two-year) degree programs would be offered in digital multi-media technologies, software engineering, energy-environment-engineering, and mechatronics.
The institute would offer dual degrees of the Austrian partner technical universities to its graduates. Once fully operational the institute would have 900 students with a faculty to student ratio of 1-16, he said.
Dr Nasser Ali Khan said that a consortium of 17 foreign universities will cooperate in this initiative. A Memorandum of Understanding has already been signed with several Austrian Fachhochschules as well as with ASIA-UNINET, he added.
He pointed out that faculty development was another important segment of the project. “About 200 PhD level faculty members will be trained in Austria for periods of up to six years during phase 1, 2 and 3 under Human Resource Development programme,” he added.
Persons holding M.S/M.Phil or equivalent qualifications will be sent to Technical Universities in Austria for four years to obtain a PhD degree in the relevant discipline and then sent for further training for up to two years to the partner Fachhochschule for understanding the system of education being imparted.
Those already holding a PhD degree will be sent for two years for training in the Fachhochschule, he said.Vice-chancellor Dr Nasser Ali Khan said that tactical training laboratories of international quality have been planned for the institute. “The programme is not just one of higher education,” he said, adding that it was closely inter-linked to a simultaneous programme for the development of technology-driven enterprises.
“The concept can only be realized holistically if the educational infrastructure created by the university has a corresponding and closely parallel growth in high-technology industry,” he opined. “To meet this objective the Pak-Austria Institute of Science and Technology will have an adjacent Technology Park,” he added.
