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Full Length Research Paper
Status of project
management education in Pakistan
Faisal Manzoor Arain1* and Syed Awais Ahmad
Tipu2
1Construction Project Management Department, Southern Alberta Institute of
Technology, Calgary, Canada.
2College of Business Administration, University of Sharjah, UAE
*Corresponding author. E-mail:
faisal.arain@sait.ca,
faisal.arain@gmail.com.
Accepted
26 March, 2009
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Abstract |
Emerging contractual delivery systems, collaborative
partnerships, new management initiatives, and global
product markets require professionals and students to
have a broader awareness of construction methods and
project management issues. This paper presents the state
of the project management education in Pakistan. The
analysis is based on course offerings at 61 private and
public sector universities in Pakistan. Only those
universities were selected that were recognized by the
higher education commission of Pakistan. A comprehensive
online search was conducted in which the authors
reviewed the web-sites of all 61 universities to
identify the courses being offered in project management
discipline. The analysis revealed that the concept of
project management is relatively new to the Pakistani
institutions. The private sector institutions offer more
project management related courses in comparison to the
public sector institutions. However, there was a lack of
a comprehensive independent degree program in project
management at graduate, postgraduate, and doctoral level
in Pakistan. There is a need to encourage project
management education in engineering schools of Pakistan.
The paper suggests that the Government of Pakistan
should consider the PM as an essential component in the
educational sector of Pakistan and encourage the PM
education in less developed areas as well. It would be a
complete paradigm shift for Pakistani institutions to
consider PM as a distinct discipline. Keeping in view
the central role of project management approach - that
is essential for today’s organizations, the business as
well as engineering schools should play pivotal role in
equipping our future managers with the project
management skills to face the challenges of dynamic
business world. This paper sets the foundation for
future research focusing on developing project
management curricula for selected degree levels in
Pakistani universities.
Key
words:
Project management, education, developing countries,
Pakistan.
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