official allays fears of students, teachers four-year BS (Honours) programme

BS (Honours): official allays fears of students, teachers
Lahore: Higher Education Commission Executive Director Dr Sohail H. Naqvi has said the HEC fully backs the Punjab government’s four-year BS (Honours) programme.
Speaking at an orientation seminar organised by the Punjab Higher Education Department at Alhamra Hall-II on Tuesday, Dr Naqvi said the HEC had visualised this four-year degree programme almost a decade ago and had so far implemented it in 130 universities across the country. He said the programme was currently being offered in 108 disciplines.
It had proved successful and the market had responded positively towards the BS (Honours) degree-holders. “This BS (Honours) degree is a ticket to go and compete anywhere in the world,” he remarked.
Higher Education Secretary Ahad Khan Cheema said Pakistan had weird features; there were top universities and colleges, highly-qualified faculty, brainy students but still half of the population was illiterate — a situation that threatened the very existence of society. “We need to expand professional and general education,” he said.
Referring to the concerns of faculty members, parents and students, Mr Cheema said the colleges were being granted autonomy and delegation of power. He said it was a wrong notion that colleges were being privatised. He said regular faculty members would continue their services without any change in their terms and conditions.
He assured the students (and their parents) that there would be no increase in fees, not even in the market-driven disciplines to be launched by the autonomous colleges supervised by boards of governors. He said the Punjab government had already given additional Rs250 million for these colleges to meet the expenses of teachers to be recruited from the private sector.
He said the BoGs would recruit teachers from private sector in the disciplines for which there would be no teacher in the government sector. Otherwise, he said, the faculty strength would be completed through transfer of regular teachers.
Answering questions by the stakeholders, the secretary said the BoGs would ensure that the teachers stayed at their colleges because “the government service is not a part-time job”.
He said the Punjab government initially undertook the task of providing basic infrastructure during summer vacation so that the new students could feel the change in colleges but it was delayed owing to floods in the country. He said the education department would face minimum financial cut.
One of the college teachers present there pointed out a “major anomaly in rules and regulations” as they stated that the Punjab University-attached colleges would admit students after the closure of admissions to BS (Honours) programme. This meant that the new autonomous colleges would get the ‘leftover stuff’ of students, he said.The faculty member also complained that the Punjab University did not offer the teachers any academic and technical help. He feared that it seemed that the university would not do so in future as well because neither the vice chancellor nor any other representative from the Punjab University came to attend the launch of this major initiative.
He said it was also unacceptable that the college teachers had been given only 20 per cent weightage, while the PU would have 80 per cent weightage.
“The education department would talk to the PU officials on these issues,” the higher education secretary said.
Government Postgraduate College for Women, Samanabad, BoG member Nasira Iqbal (a retired judge) said the board had four industrialists as members and she wondered how they would contribute to the quality education. She regretted that it was unfortunate that people join and leave the department on ‘recommendation’. She stressed that commitment of teachers was required to make this programme a success.
Mr Cheema said the college would benefit from the vision of the industrialists who had survived and progressed in the highly-competitive market. “Politicians and businessmen are more intelligent than the civil servants,” he added.
In-charge education minister Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman said the Punjab government wanted to improve the higher education system. He said the colleges had been given autonomy to enable them to take decisions independently.
Earlier, University of Gujrat Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Muhammad Nizamuddin said the new programme was actually a change of mindset and not merely a change of two-year degree programme to four-year programme.
He said the department had selected 26 reputed degree colleges that comparatively had better faculty, staff and equipment. He said BS (Honours) was an internationally standardised degree programme offering in-depth knowledge in an elected major subject.
The UoG VC said the semester system had a 90 per cent success rate compared to the annual system, where success rate was only 22 per cent. He said the semester system would also offer more opportunities for research, written papers, field work, service learning, more multi-stage assignments and lab experiments.
Lahore College for Women University Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Bushra Mateen said there would be no choice in semester examination according to the HEC guidelines.
Government Postgraduate College for Women, Samanabad, Principal Dr Tasneem Akhtar and Government Islamia College for Women, Cooper Road, Principal Ms Farzana also spoke. Dawn