Southern Pakistan's port city Karachi will have an Italian engineering and technical university in less than two years, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported Tuesday.

The university will be set up by an Italian universities consortium led by Italian's prestigious technical university Politecnico Di Torino, the APP report said.

The Karachi campus would be ready by the end of 2009 and that by October 2008 the masters' classes would start at its provisional campus located at the Marine Academy in Karachi, an senior education program official of Politecnico Di Torino announced Tuesday in the south city.

Accordingly, in this connection Politecnico Di Torino, which is the first technical university in Italy and ranked seventh in Europe, has signed an agreement with Pakistan's Higher Education Commission.

The campus will be located at a land measuring about 1,300 acres and in this area the universities of France and South Korea would also be housed, according to APP.

A big technology park comprising privately-owned company research centers and an incubator for the innovative high-tech companies reportedly will be hosted in the campus and coordinated by the other two universities - the French and the South Korean.

Officials said the vision for the Karachi campus embraces a strong focus on technology transfer and this will help improve the level of engineering education in Pakistan.

The APP report added that eight other universities are also being set up in Pakistan with foreign collaboration.

Source:Xinhua