April 30, 2006	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, April 29: Students of Federal Urdu University here on Saturday locked their Vice-Chancellor Dr Syed Mohsin and some other staff in their offices for three hours while protesting against the varsity administration for not awarding them degrees it had pledged.

The university had advertised admissions to MSc in telecommunications and Bachelors of Engineering programmes, however, is now unable to provide the same degrees to the students.

A number of students told Dawn that the administration was not willing to seek permission from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for providing MSC degrees in telecommunications.

The students enrolled in the programme were now being asked to accept a specialised degree in telecommunication instead of MSc, an offer rejected by the students unanimously keeping in view the limited job prospects.

They said students enrolled in the Bachelors of Engineering (BE) programme were also facing the same problem as the university was unable to get degree awarding status from the Pakistan Engineering Council.

On Saturday, a large number of angry students gathered in front of the university’s main gate at 12:30pm when the administration refused to accept their demand regarding an agreement that they would be awarded degrees in the disciplines they were pursuing.

Some students broke couple of windowpanes, however, they were contained by MPhil students who feared university closure in case of violent protest.

The students also smashed the wind screen of a Rescue-15 vehicle when the police tried to enter the campus and rescue the staff.

Meanwhile, a large number of law enforcement agencies officials gathered around the university but did not enter the campus after the students remained calm and initiated talks with the vice-chancellor and other staff members.

At 3pm, the university staff assured the students that talks would be initiated with the HEC and the Pakistan Engineering Council next week and that the administration would try to get the degree awarding status for both the programmes.

Later, the students cleared the gate and allowed the vice-chancellor and other staff to leave the campus.