Karachi Colleges admissions CAP placement list

First CAP list to be issued before Ramazan
Karachi, Aug 12: The Centralised Admission Policy (CAP) committee will issue a day before Ramazan the first placement list of candidates seeking admission to the first-year home economics and computer science groups in government colleges of the city, provincial director-general of colleges Prof (Dr) Rafique Ahmed Siddiqui said on Tuesday.

Prof Siddiqui, who is also the chairman of the CAP committee, said that although the last date for purchasing and submitting admission forms had been extended to Aug 15, scrutiny of the admission forms that had been received so far had already been begun by the committee.

Answering another question, he said that over 77,000 admission prospectuses had been sold by Monday while the CAP committee had, so far, received 45,000 admission forms.

He said that 82,000 admissions were given last year in government colleges, and their number would cross the 90,000 figure this year.

Prof Siddiqui said that with a view to accommodating all fresh matric students, the number of government colleges in the city was being increased from 123 to 130.

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Students not to pay bank charges
Karachi: The State Bank has asked all banks to stop collecting service charges from students depositing fees in account of educational institutions.

A circular issued on Tuesday said that banks had been instructed not to levy any service charge on such deposits.

The circular said that charges for pay order, demand draft or any other instrument for payment of fee or dues of educational institutions, HEC, board, etc., may not exceed 0.5 per cent of the amount of fee or dues or Rs25 per instrument whichever is less.

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KU faculty of education: teachers demand separate dean
Karachi: The absence of a separate dean for Karachi University's faculty of education is the source of much discontent amongst teachers and students, as important administrative and academic decisions are continuously being delayed, it has been learnt.

It is important to mention here that the dean of the faculty of arts and special adviseor to KU's vice-chancellor, Dr Shamsuddin, holds the additional charge of dean of the faculty of education. He is also acting as the chairman of three departments and as the director of the Institute of Clinical Psychology and the Applied Economics Research Centre (AERC).

According to sources, the concentration of powers and responsibilities in one individual has led to many problems on the campus. The situation has developed mainly due to conflicts amongst teachers and the absence of associate professors and professors in the relevant departments and institutes.

At the moment, there are nine colleges of education affiliated with the university; two in the public sector (Jamia Millia Govt College of Education in Malir and Govt College of Education, F.B. Area) and the rest in the private sector. Over 1,200 students are getting education and training at these institutions, which award degrees of BEd and MEd.

Though the university also has an education department of its own, its course outline differs from what is taught at these colleges, where the focus is more on teaching methodologies and providing professional training. Besides, the students at KU's department of education get MA and BA degrees in education. The department is not part of the faculty of education, but rather of KU's arts faculty.

According to senior teachers at these colleges, the deanship of the education faculty was traditionally given to any senior professor of the two public sector colleges of education and this trend continued till the late 1990s, when Prof Dr Fatima Razi, a PhD in education who was then serving as chairperson at KU's department of education, was made the dean of the faculty of education.

This happened because the Higher Education Commission had set a condition that the dean would be a professor of grade 20, or a professor of grade 19 with a PhD, and there was nobody at the colleges to meet the criteria. Earlier, all professors who were appointed as deans from colleges were associate professors, as there was no post for a full professor at the time the colleges started operation: F. B. Area College in the 1950s and Jamia Millia College in 1973.

After Dr Fatima Razi's retirement, Prof Dr Abu Zar Wajidi, the then dean of the faculty of arts, was given the additional charge of being the dean of the faculty of education in 2001, because the colleges still had no professor meeting the HEC criteria.

'Ad hoc arrangement causing problems'

Prof Dr Wajidi remained at the post until the end of 2003, when he was replaced by Prof Dr Shamsuddin, as the dean of the faculty of arts, who still continues to retain the charge.

At the moment, there are a couple of associate professors in grade 19 at public sector colleges working for over 20 years. However, there is only one with a PhD.

The absence of a full professor at these colleges, it is said, is not indicative of the lack of competency, but rather of long delays in appointments and promotions and the flaws in government mechanisms.

"The continued ad hoc arrangement is actually the main reason behind the many problems the colleges face today. There has been no meeting of the faculty since the KU started giving the additional charge of being the dean of the faculty of education to its dean of the arts faculty," said one teacher at Jamia Millia college.

According to teachers, there are many important issues which have been pending for many years, only because the KU dean "never has time" due to his other engagements.

"We do have meetings of the board of studies twice a year, but there are many issues that can be resolved only by faculty members. For instance, the controversy over the prevailing system of examinations in professional colleges, which is a hotchpotch of semester and annual systems," say teachers.

"Both bachelor's and master's programmes are continuously suffering in terms of delays at the start of new sessions and in the announcements of results, only due to the lack of supervision on the part of the dean," they added.

They also complained about the dean's inaction over the first ever major decline in pass percentage in the BEd results announced this year. "The overall pass percentage has always been between 60 and 70. This is the first time in decades that the overall percentage dropped to 40 per cent," remarked a retired teacher.

He further said that the dean should have taken notice of the matter before the results were announced, because he was the first to sign the results.

Another major problem is the revision of curriculum. It was last updated in 1995-96. Critics, however, called that measure a 'face-saving' step as it carried no substantial changes. The teachers claim that the former pro-vice-chancellor Prof Dr Ikhlaq Ahmed had called for modernising the curriculum of the professional colleges two years ago in a meeting, but there was no follow-up on the matter.

"The colleges of education are professional colleges and a dean should be appointed from these colleges as is the case with KU's medical and law faculties. The colleges have been in dire need of a curriculum revision for decades and there are many flaws in the present examination system. These inadequacies need to be removed as quickly as possible," said Professor M. Athar Ali Khan, former dean of the faculty of education and principal of the Hashmat Memorial College of Education in Gulshan-i-Iqbal.

Prof Dr Pirzada Qasim, KU vice-chancellor, defended the decision of appointing the dean of the arts faculty as the dean of the faculty of education, saying: "No associate professor, but only a full professor can hold the position of a dean, according to the university code. The appointments of associate professors as deans in the past were wrong. Our future plan is to set up a chair of the education faculty on the campus, for which senior professors would be hired, and it is likely that a dean should be chosen from among those."

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Campus clash MUET takes action against accused
Hyderabad: The authorities at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Jamshoro have decided to suspend admissions of two students and issue show-cause notices to three others for their alleged involvement in the murder of a student leader.

The decision was taken in a meeting of heads of the departments and presided over by Vice-Chancellor Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan on Tuesday.

The meeting discussed the situation arising after the murder of Jeay Sindh Students Federation (Arisar) leader Asad-ur-Rehman Abbasi in a clash between two student groups on the campus on August 7 and decided to suspend the admissions of Mohammad Hussain Jatt, a final year industrial engineering student and Ahmed Hussain Jatt, a third year industrial engineering student.

The meeting decided to issue show cause notices to Ehsan Kandhar of the Sindh People's Students Federation, architecture final year student; Majid Hussain Memon alias Haidri (JSSF), a final year student of petroleum and gas engineering; and Mushtaq Hussain Jamali (JSSF), final year student of industrial engineering.

It also decided to postpone the supplementary paper scheduled from August 15 to August 23 and the beginning of undergraduate and postgraduate classes from August 17.

Meanwhile, students belonging to the JSSF-A staged a protest demonstration outside the press club against the murder of Asad Abbasi and delay in arrest of the culprits.

The JSSF-A leaders Mir Mushtaq Soomro, Ameer Hassan Panhwar, Imtiaz Gurgez and others said that their comrades were attacked in the MUET in the presence of law enforcement agencies and university administration. They alleged that the university administration and police were protecting the murderers.

They demanded the arrest of Abbasi's killers and warned the police, university administration and authorities of the consequences in case of failure.

LUMHS: The Vice-Chancellor of Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Prof Noshad Ahmed Shaikh presided over a meeting of officials on Tuesday for enhancing the security on campus.

The vice-chancellor called for increasing security on the main gates along with the installation of close-circuit-cameras to monitor the activities of people entering and leaving the university.

He also expressed the necessity of providing walky-talky to security guards and placing a security system in the offices of vice chancellor and administrator for keeping a check on campus activities. Dawn

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