Purpose: The birth of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has instantly drawn the attention of scholars, academicians and learners. Millions of participants are learning through this freely accessible model of education. The purpose of this paper is to review the development of MOOCs, its characteristics and to explore its potential and challenges in Pakistan particularly. Design/methodology/approach: The data were collected through interviews and focus group, and the respondents had completed at least one MOOC offering. This research used content and thematic analysis with the triangulation of methods and sources. Findings: The finding of this study reflects that MOOCs are inspiring great number of learners in Pakistan despite of factors impeding the surge of e-learning. MOOCs in regional languages with better electricity and internet connectivity could be very useful for the rural areas’ people but it requires extra ordinary interest from government and academicians. Research limitations/implications: This is an exploratory qualitative study highlighting the potential and challenges of MOOCs from the perspective of faculty and students. However, it does not incorporate the views of university officials. Similar study could consider university officials and university owner as respondents. In addition, future studies could also investigate the factors inhibiting completion of MOOCs. Originality/value: Despite of the sharp rise of published literature on MOOCs, there is less contribution from the developing countries. This research enables us to develop better understanding of the potential and challenges of MOOCs in the social context of Pakistan.

The socio-economic conditions of the world’s underprivileged people have been a matter of concern to the whole world for over three decades. Not-for-profit human development institutes helping this sector have financial sustainability as an important issue due to their usual dependence principally on funding from donors to operate and fund their tasks. This research has adopted a two-fold examination method. Primarily, the financial sustainability of the not-for-profit human development institutes working in Pakistan have been investigated by conducting ratio analysis grounded on donor dependence ratio (DDR), and using constructive grounded theory, a FinTech-enabled financial sustainable model, has been proposed for NPHDIs. Results of the initial phase demonstrated a heavy reliance on donors’ funding, with the DDR varying between 91.73% and 100% based on 10 randomly selected NPHDIs working in Pakistan as a sample. Furthermore, four key themes have been categorized during the subsequent phase, which have been articulated collectively to outline the FinTech-enabled endowment—a proposed financially sustainable model. The DDR for the selected NPHDIs have been found to be greater than 25%, so they are regarded as financially unsustainable. FinTech-empowered endowment is considered as an alternative to donor fundings, as such endowments based on social finance can provide income streams that are considered sustainable for these NPHDIs. The overview and implications lead to new knowledge of tackling the biggest challenges of providing sustainable finance to the social sector. This perspective of ethical finance helps to address the issues faced by this world’s underprivileged segment and address the problems of poverty and inequality elimination.

The latest evolving threats to modern cyber security is making difficult for public and private sector organizations to protect their intellectual property and business information in digital form against theft, damage and misuse. Therefore, businesses need to become proactive and must have an adaptive approach in order to cater for this constant evolution of technology-related threats. In order to ensure successful cyber security strategy, Pakistan is facing two major problems. Firstly, there are no in-country formal trainings related to hacking. Therefore, only option is to have ethical hacker certification from abroad, which is expensive and beyond the approach of a mediocre citizen. Secondly, there is an acute crisis of job opportunities in the IT sector. In order to address these glaring issues; the Ministry of Defense, Interior Ministry and IT Ministry in liaison with Public and Private sector Universities of Pakistan has launched various programs for the development of legitimate hackers and to address the issue of un-employment in IT sector of Pakistan. This paper identifies the gaps in existing ethical hacking practices in vogue and helps to develop its own activity plan for self-defense against such cyber-attacks. The improved practices in ethical hacking will not only address the issues like availability of certified ethical hackers, un-employment in IT sector and defense against cyber-attacks, but will also promote the image of Pakistan as a peaceful nation across the world.

This paper investigates Excess Liquidity problem faced by the Islamic Banking Industry of Pakistan because the Shariah Compliant Money and Capital Markets are in infancy stage in Pakistan. Demand for Shariah Compliant Sovereign Securities is very high, while the supply is very restricted compared to Sovereign Securities available to Conventional Banks in Pakistan. The purpose of this research is to review the impact of Excess Liquidity on Profitability of Islamic Banks vs. Conventional Banks in Pakistan. The research is based on secondary data of Islamic & Conventional Banks for a period of 10 years ranging from 2008 to 2017. The study uses Descriptive and Inferential Statistics based on Independent t-test & GLM Mediation Model analysis. The findings of this research is that Islamic Banks in Pakistan have positive Excess Liquidity while Conventional Banks have negative Excess Liquidity. Profitability of Islamic Banks in Pakistan is low as compared to their Conventional Counterpart. The Solvency, measured through Total Asset to Total Equity (TATER) is found to differ significantly for Islamic Banks than Conventional Banks. Based on Mediation Analysis, it may be concluded that: (1) The liquidity copiousness in Pakistani Islamic Banks in the shape of Excess Liquidity does have a direct impact on the Profitability of Islamic Banks; whereas in case of Conventional Bank of Pakistan the comparable Liquidity does have direct impact on their Profitability; (2) In Islamic Bank, the Solvency mediates the relationship between Excess Liquidity & Profitability. The Solvency in conventional banks also mediates the relationship between comparable Liquidity and Profitability

IntroThe World’s Indigent Population’s socio-economic status has drawn the attention of the entire world for more than three decades. The Not-for-Profit Human Development Institutes (NPHDIs), aiming to serve this segment, faces Financial Sustainability as one of the major issues, as they are usually dependent on donors’ funds especially to run and finance their operations. If there is a shift in the donors’ donation preferences, then there is uncertainty in the fund generation forcing these organizations to get into turmoil, and this not only hampers their ability to serve but also challenges their survival and existence.MethodsThis study has been conducted in a two-fold research approach. Firstly, NPHDIs operating in Pakistan have been studied to evaluate their Financial Sustainability through Ratio Analysis based on Donor Dependent Ratio (DDR) and then, a FinTech integrated Financial Sustainability Model for NPHDIs has been proposed using Constructive Grounded Theory. ResultsFindings of the first phase shows there is a heavily reliant on donors funding with the DDR ranging from 100% to 91.73% based on a sample of ten randomly selected NPHDIs operating in Pakistan. Whereas, four main themes have been identified during the second phase, which has been articulated together to form FinTech-integrated Endowment – A proposed Financially Sustainable Model.ConclusionThe values of NPHDIs’ DDR are not less than 25%, so they are considered to be Financially Unsustainable. FinTech-enabled-Endowment is one main alternative to donors’ dependent funds, which can provide sustainable revenue streams for these NPHDIs based on Social Finance Theory.