Karachi colleges admission & CAP committee
College admissions
Karachi, Sep 06: It has been reported that 30,000 seats
may not be filled in Karachi's colleges and higher secondary schools in
the public sector as sufficient applications for admissions have not
been received. This underlines the appalling state of affairs in higher
education in the city and indicates that college education is suffering
from poor planning and there is a serious disconnect between demand and
supply. At another level, it confirms the decadence that
has beset public-sector education. There was a time when all colleges
had been nationalised and private colleges were not allowed to operate.
The pressure on government institutions for admission from students
passing the secondary school-leaving examination was immense. The slow
pace of expansion of college education forced thousands of students to
drop out. That would not have been such a bad thing if a sufficient
number of polytechnics had simultaneously been established to train
young men and women for the job market. Today the scene has changed. The
government has opened new colleges while the private sector has been
permitted to enter the college education sector as well. According
to the authorities, the low number of applicants for government
colleges means that students are showing a marked preference for private
institutions. Is this surprising given the relatively better standard
of education they offer? Even the higher fee they charge does not deter
students from approaching them. There is also another factor: science
subjects are in greater demand and there are not sufficient seats for
this faculty. In view of the higher cost of establishing laboratories,
the government is hesitant to invest in science education even though
this makes its planning lopsided. It would help if the education
authorities and those managing the industrial, financial and services
sectors were to carry out a joint assessment exercise every few years to
determine the nature and number of jobs available in the employment
market and match these with the education facilities to be created in
various disciplines. It makes no sense to have a glut of unemployed
highly educated young professionals in one area with a dearth of trained
people in other sectors.
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CAP committee fails to meet admission deadline
Karachi: The deadline fixed by the Sindh education department
for completing the process of admissions to first year classes in
government educational institutions will end on Saturday with no sign in
sight how many more days will be required to accomplish the entire
process of admissions and when the new academic session for the new
students will begin. According to a Centralised Admission
Policy's (CAP) brochure, the process of admissions to first year classes
in the city's government colleges and higher secondary schools was
scheduled to be completed by Sept 4 and the new academic session for the
fresh first year students was to commence on Sept 6. However,
since the CAP committee which has been assigned the task of completing
the admissions process has not yet been able to issue the placement
lists, the question of new academic session's beginning from Sept 6 did
not even arise. More than one-and-a-half month of thousands of
fresh matriculates have already been wasted since the announcement of
their results and yet all the over 70,000 candidates who have applied
for admissions to first year classes in the city's public sector
colleges and higher secondary schools under the CAP are still uncertain
about their new academic session as the CAP committee is silent over the
issue. Some students seeking admissions to first year said
that the inordinate delay in completing the process of admissions had
already left them behind the students in the city's private colleges and
other parts of Sindh as the latter's classes had already begun about a
month ago. "Since our new academic session is going to be
reduced considerably, we will not be able to complete our entire courses
and hence will lag behind our counterparts in private colleges and
those studying in government colleges in other parts of the province,"
they said. Although the process of admissions to first year
classes had initially begun on July 23 and still continuing, the last
date fixed for completing the class XI admissions would expire on
Saturday. Dawn
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