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.