Lack of STEM Summer Schools in Pakistan

Imagine a scenario where one has to travel to the other side of the world on a 14 hour flight in order to attend a STEM summer school. Now this isn't just about the distance, but travel expenses, visa expenses and the torturous, unpredictable procedures that one has to go through in order to attend a summer school.

Well I had to do all that in order to attend a STEM summer school known as QCSYS. Of course I was and still am delighted that I got such an amazing opportunity but still the fact remains that things could have been a lot easier had our country invested in some good STEM summer schools.

Few months back, me and my brother were both accepted to attend "Quantum Cryptography School For Young Students" which was an approximately 2 weeks long summer school offered by IQC of University of Waterloo. The aim of this program was to attempt to teach high school students about Quantum Mechanics and Quantum cryptography, with the aid of interactive lectures, up-close and personal experimental experience, and activities(presentations and projects to test our learning). This program was an international program which allowed students from all over the world to attend and we were one of the first to attend ever from Pakistan. The program was all in all an interactive and enlightening experience but I had to go to great lengths in order to be able to attend it.

We received our acceptance email two months prior to the event and I had to begin the visa procedure straight away. However now I want you all to imagine that I had bought my clothes, bought my bags, bought my plane tickets and prepared everything but there was no sign of the visa. As the days closed by, I was enveloped in a mental torture and stress due to the uncertainty about my visa status. There were only a few days left and I still did not know if I was even going to be able to attend the summer school or not. Now can you believe it, we received our visa status on the LAST DAY before the flight. Thankfully it had been accepted but it was still such an embarrassing moment as I wasn't able to confirm my arrival to QCSYS until the last day. All was well after that apart from jet lag there was no problems once I boarded my flight and reached safely. But the point is that "all is NOT well that ends well".

All of this stress and uncertainty could have been avoided, had there been STEM summer schools of the same kind in my own country. I mean it would have been easier to travel within the country with minimal expenses but as I searched countless times, scrolling through every possible web page, I found to my dismay that my country offers no such programs. And even if they did, nobody knows about them. All I found were charitable internships which are also necessary and i also have partook in one but in order to allow a student to grow and give that student experience which can help him narrow down his career path is also important. Nowadays if you ask a multitude of teens about their future career, a lot will answer: "I haven't decided yet". At least this is the response I get after I asked a lot of my fellow students. Apart from this, many people just choose careers for the sake of it, because it is popular or their friends are taking it. They don't know if they even have the knack or passion for it and this uncertainty can often lead them into taking the wrong subjects or into a career which they will not perform well in. This issue of uncertainty is widespread in our country according to my belief, that is why I believe we should have STEM or any kind of summer school that relates to any subject be it arts, business, computer or economics etc. This allows students to plunge in an experience first hand, how that subject will be like. It will tell them the practical implications of that subject and will also give them an idea as to whether or not they will be able to prosper in that field. This will help in making good career choices which is not beneficial only to the individual but for the whole community overall.

This is an utter shame that we don't offer such opportunities to our children. And then we also blame them for leaving the country. How can you blame them for moving to a country with better resources or opportunities for learning when we ourselves do not make an effort to help bring the resources to them, instead we only sit and grumble about the brain drain in our country. We also have big universities and institutes but none of them seem to make an initiative by opening a summer school to help benefit the students. Universities are not only for DEGREES, they should have such programs for the summer during the time which most of the students are sitting idly suffering from a brain drain.

In other countries, there are a multitude of philanthropic organizations working hand to hand with educational institutes to promote education. They not only fund these summer schools, they also facilitate, and encourage them to go international. There are many outreach programs being sponsored, take the example of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
They "work to improve U.S. high school and post-secondary education and support vulnerable children". Apart from this, Mike Lazardis who co-founded blackberry also invested in Perimeter Institute and IQC which both host STEM summer schools and are leading institutes in research. Unfortunately in Pakistan, there are little to none amount of activity being done by any philanthropic organizations or philanthropists. And our government can hardly invest in making a running educational system.

Education can not only be improved by the government, a private-public partnership is an essential. There is a dire need for private sector to come forward and invest in our educational programs and our government should invite them to work on STEM related projects which will help our nation with building a prosperous and goal oriented youth who will be able to get a head start into the new advanced era.