PESHAWAR, Sept 15: Scores of students seeking admission to institutions offering information technology courses thronged the venue of a one-day exhibition here to get firsthand information about different universities in the provincial metropolis.

The exhibition was arranged by the Standard Business Syndicate at a local hotel on Sunday.

“Many universities claim to provide IT education to students at competitive fees. Some are operating in a two-room setup and do not qualify to be called a university,” said Usman Bhatti, executive director of the SBS.

“By organising this exhibition, we have provided an opportunity to students to come and select courses for themselves, because most of the universities and institutions have established their stalls,” he added.

According to him, the aspiring candidates had a whole IT market here from which to select the right courses.

Director Finance of the City University, Mohammad Kashif said that many students complained about non-availability of jobs on completion of their studies.

There was no dearth of jobs in our country, he empha-sized. “But the problem was that the educational insti-tutions charged students heavily but taught them nothing,” he added.

After completing the course, the students are armed with a degree but they have no knowledge about the work.

This impaired their chances of finding an appropriate job, Mohammad Kashif contended.

There were stalls offering free consultation to the students seeking admission to educational institutions in foreign countries.

Meanwhile, a student said he had been deprived of Rs50,000 by a fake organisation dealing in overseas admission.

This exhibition would act as a trend-setter for the students belonging to this part of the world and they would be able to contact the correct and genuine organisation for the purpose, claimed Mr Salik, of HR Consultants.

His organisation, he said, was established in 1992 and had facilitated thousands of students wanting admission in overseas universities.

The stall of Beaconhouse Informatics also remained the focus of attention because the attendants of the stall claimed they were offering degrees issued by the UK-based university.

He said the fee charged by them was comparatively high but students got education and degree staying back in Pakistan, without having to pay for the boarding, lodging staying abroad. The first session, he said, would commence from Sept 25 in Peshawar.

Many visitors told Dawn they had been finding it hard to select the right courses at the right time because of the increasing number of the IT universities in the city.

“Today’s event is great, because I am now clear on many things about which I didn’t know much before,” said one, Shehzad Amjad.

He said that he visited all the 13 stalls and was able to choose one university to seek admission to.

According to him, a lot of such events took place in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, but not here in Peshawar.