Career Counselling-Cry of the day!

Education provides the roadmap towards the development of a nation. It enables people to achieve their individual and national goals, make people realize of their roles as a global citizen, and promotes economic development. Pakistan being an emerging economy is going through economic degeneration and social instability having its roots in the weak education system of Pakistan. In addition, the country is facing many other problems such as, sectarian violence, poverty, insecurity acting as the antecedents of lack of tolerance, lack of awareness and illiteracy rate among the people of Pakistan.

Despite all odds, the concept of counselors and counselling is still in the embryonic stages in the country. There is a huge lack of consultancy in Pakistan and nowadays when we are stepping forward to the modern world, counselling isn’t as popular as it should be. Even in universities and colleges education counselors are as important as teachers but our education system is yet to realize the importance of the critical role of counselors in the development and grooming of the young blood. Had counselling been given the right level of importance, our country would have been among the most favorite education destinations across the globe.

Generally, there are a lot of students in Pakistan with excellent academic backgrounds having the vision to pursue their higher studies from abroad. But a vision without proper planning is a mere dream and this has been the case in Pakistan. Due to the lack of awareness and proper counselling the young and talented youth of the nation is found to be in a state of career dilemma. Developing a proper counselling policy and making it an integral part of the higher education policy of the country is becoming cry of the day. In this regard, the private sector is found to play an active role in providing consultancy services to the students. Although they are doing a wonderful job but there have been incidents of frauds with the students by local and private consultancy firms. In this regard, I would like to propose some dos and don’ts that may benefit the students while availing the consultancy services.

Dos and Don’ts:

• Whenever you visit any consultancy firm, don’t forget to check their history. For this purpose, checking their website and social media pages will help a lot.
• Check their success stories (approval of student’s visa) on their social media platforms if any.
• Check the websites and social media platforms of universities which are on board with them so that you will know they are authentic or not. And if they have name of your concerned agency verify from them.
• When you choose any university check the authentication specially their ranking and location because mostly, they aren’t credible.
• Last but not the least, if they are offering you financial aid in terms of bank statement then you should not avail their services. Because a genuine counselor’s job is to advise you for career development. Anyone providing aid in terms of bank statement is not a counselor rather he/she is using you as a source of revenue generation.