07 January 2004	Wednesday	14 Ziqa'ad 1424

ISLAMABAD, Jan 6: The government will soon launch a rating system to determine the standard of different universities in the country, Minister In charge of Science and Technology Prof Attaur Rehman said here on Tuesday.

"The university education must not be confined to teaching, but there should be a blend of teaching as well as research so that real learning can take place," Dr Rehman said while speaking at the first convocation of Shifa College of Medicine (SCM) at Bahria University Auditorium.

He said the rating would be done by utilizing internationally known and accepted yardsticks like impact factor and citations index. It will be based on research publications in international journals, ability of the teachers to win international grants, infrastructure and available facilities at the university.

The government, he said, was also in a process to provide all the universities and research organizations in the country free access to 11,600 international research journals through internet.

"We are the first in the world to provide students free access to more than 3,000 journals and lecture delivered in any prestigious international university through satellite," the minister said.

The modern world is advancing in different fields of science, like Biotechnology, which has opened vast opportunities of development, particularly in health and agriculture sector and production of vaccines. This has also made possible the production of special varieties of wheat and rice having potential to cure night blindness. Tissue culture technology can greatly contribute to high agricultural production, he said.

Prof Rehman said the decoding of human genome had opened vast avenues of research and development in medicinal sciences. He asked the students to inculcate the habit of continuous yearning and love for knowledge. He also congratulated the 1st MBBS batch of the college.

The college awarded MBBS degrees to its 1st batch of 30 students during the ceremony. Dr Nadia was given 1st Ibn-i-Sina Gold Medal for her extraordinary academic performance. Earlier, Dr Riyazur Rahman, rector of Bahria University, and Dean of SCM Dr M. Amin also spoke on the occasion.