AKU-Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Aga Khan University (AKU), based in Karachi, is in the process of creating a Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

AKU has established an international reputation for innovation and rigour in medical, nursing and teacher education at both undergraduate and graduate levels and in its developmental and training work for schools, including a very successful Master's programme. It currently operates on 11 campuses in Pakistan, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Egypt and the United Kingdom, and has programmes in Syria and Afghanistan.

Early in the next decade, AKU will open a residential Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) that will provide a general education curriculum at both undergraduate and graduate levels. It will develop a new breed of leaders, in government and business, who are equipped with critical-thinking and problem-solving capabilities, and a global outlook.

This new campus, to be located on 1,100 acres on the outskirts of Karachi, will offer a range of undergraduate and graduate courses, from archeology to quantum physics, from music to South Asian history. In the first phase, FAS will enroll 1,500 undergraduate and 100 postgraduate students. Undergraduates will receive an education which encompasses the natural and social sciences, alongside the humanities. Teaching will be student-centred and will draw on the latest tools of information technology. Students will begin with a broad core curriculum and then proceed to a single or dual area of concentration for advanced work. Special encouragement will be given to interdisciplinary work.

A new campus in East Africa will serve as AKU'S principal site for the region and will support existing nursing and medical education programmes in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The campus will serve the University's planned academic programmes in the liberal arts in East Africa. Students from all over Africa and beyond are expected to enroll. These developments would be in addition to the already significant investments in medical education planned for the Nairobi campus.

Expansion at these two new main campuses is expected to double the student body and triple the size of the overall physical campus.

The University is in the process of developing institutional strategies for a number of new graduate disciplines which will be located either in Karachi or in East Africa. These are likely to include Architecture and Human Settlement; Government, Civil Society and Public Policy; Media and Communications; Leisure and Tourism; and Education and Human Development.