The HEC AI training program known as ACT AI has crossed its first major milestone, graduating 6,000 students from 100 universities across Pakistan. Chosen from a pool of more than 82,000 applicants, these graduates represent a tiny but significant first batch in the government’s plan to build a nationally competitive AI workforce by 2030.
What Is the HEC AI Training Program ACT AI?
ACT AI stands for Awareness, Competency and Tools Training for Artificial Intelligence. The Higher Education Commission (HEC) partnered with AI SkillBridge, the Prime Minister’s Youth Programme (PMYP), and the National Vocational and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC) to run the programme.
The idea was simple but ambitious: use HEC’s existing Smart Classroom Network to broadcast live AI lessons from the capital to students at 100 universities at the same time. No student needed to travel. No university needed to hire a new faculty member. The same instructor, the same lesson, reached everyone at once.
This was the first time the HEC Smart Classroom Network was used at this scale for a skills programme, making the graduation ceremony a genuine first in Pakistan’s education history.
Only 1 in 13 Applicants Made the Cut
The numbers tell a striking story. More than 82,000 students applied nationwide. A rigorous proctored exam was held to filter them. Just 6,000 made it through, roughly one in every 13.7 applicants. That acceptance rate is tighter than admission to many engineering and medical programmes in the country.
This was not a free giveaway certificate. Students had to earn their place, sit through a formal exam, and then complete eight weeks of structured training before receiving a jointly endorsed certificate from all four partner organisations.
The 600 top-performing students across both batches will go further. They will receive scholarships for advanced AI training, opening a path toward deeper technical skills beyond the foundation level.
What Did Students Actually Learn and Build?
The curriculum ran across four areas: Foundations of AI, AI Applications Across Sectors, AI for Economic Empowerment, and the Future of AI and National Preparedness. The training focused on practical, job-ready skills in areas like generative AI, agentic AI systems, and automation tools, with no coding experience required to start.
At the graduation ceremony, students did not just collect certificates. They demonstrated real projects, including working applications, websites, and AI agents they had built during the course. Federal Minister Shaza Fatima, who attended the ceremony and interacted live with students from different universities, praised the projects and encouraged graduates to keep building practical AI solutions for Pakistan’s digital economy.
The HEC AI Training Program and the National AI Policy 2025
This graduation sits directly inside a larger national plan. Pakistan’s federal cabinet approved the National AI Policy 2025 in late July 2025. The policy sets a target of training one million people in AI by 2030, developing 10,000 AI trainers, providing 20,000 internships per year, and giving 3,000 postgraduate scholarships annually.
Officials described the ACT AI programme as the first practical step toward that one-million-student goal. With 6,000 trained in the first round, there is a long road ahead, but the infrastructure is now proven. The HEC Smart Classroom Network can deliver simultaneous training to a hundred campuses at once, including institutions in all four provinces as well as Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Pakistan also faces a sobering baseline. Research on the National AI Policy 2025 notes that fewer than 10% of the current computing and IT workforce in the country is AI-skilled. The ACT AI programme is a direct attempt to fix that gap at the university level before students even enter the job market.
For readers interested in how Pakistan is thinking about AI governance more broadly, our earlier piece on Pakistan’s lack of binding AI rules for hospitals and banks shows that the skills push is moving faster than the regulatory framework, a gap the government will need to close.
What Comes Next?
The programme is designed to repeat every two months, meaning a new cohort of students can begin soon. If the pace holds and the cycle runs six times a year, Pakistan could train tens of thousands of students annually through this single channel alone, without building new classrooms or hiring thousands of new teachers.
The 600 scholarship winners from this batch will move into advanced training, which could produce a smaller but deeper layer of AI talent on top of the broad awareness the ACT AI programme creates. That two-tier approach, wide awareness plus a focused advanced track, mirrors the strategy used in countries like India and Bangladesh that are also scaling AI education fast.
Whether the momentum holds depends on budget, on whether the next exam draws similar numbers, and on whether the certificates carry weight with employers. But as a proof of concept, using a national broadcast classroom network to train 6,000 students across a hundred campuses at once, the first batch has already shown the model works.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the ACT AI programme in Pakistan?
ACT AI is Pakistan’s first nationally coordinated university-level AI skills programme, run by AI SkillBridge in partnership with HEC, PMYP, and NAVTTC. It delivers live AI training through the HEC Smart Classroom Network to students at 100 universities simultaneously over an eight-week period.
How were the 6,000 students selected?
Over 82,000 students applied from across the country. A nationwide proctored exam was used to select the final 6,000, making the process more competitive than many formal degree admissions in Pakistan.
What certificate do graduates receive?
Graduates get a jointly endorsed certificate from all four partner bodies: HEC, AI SkillBridge, PMYP, and NAVTTC. The top 600 performers also qualify for advanced AI training scholarships.
How does this link to Pakistan’s National AI Policy 2025?
The National AI Policy 2025, approved by the federal cabinet in July 2025, aims to train one million people in AI by 2030. Officials have described the ACT AI programme as the first concrete step toward that target, using the existing HEC university network to scale training nationwide at low cost.
