With the declaration of matriculation results, the race to seek admissions is set to gain momentum across Punjab after Eidul Fitr as over 500,000 fresh matriculates will be looking for seats in colleges of their choice. Like previous years, girls have outshined boys not only in earning high marks but also as the total number of successful candidates.
Punjab’s higher education sector is seemingly on a decline in terms of quality education as more and more students (and their parents) prefer private colleges. There are only a few public colleges, which can literally be counted on fingers, across Punjab that are ranked among the top colleges, and top scorers compete for admissions there. The maximum pressure for admissions is seen in Lahore.
The limited number of public colleges -- around 450 -- are also unable to offer seats to all matriculates. The Higher Education Department website says there are 690 colleges in Punjab, but that does not correspond to the names of institutes mentioned on the site.
Most top students in all nine boards have voiced that they might be joining private colleges that not only offer quality education but also pamper them with fee waivers and other financial benefits. However, there is no such incentive in the public institutes.
Some public and private sector colleges opened admissions soon after the results were announced; many will start selling their prospectuses after Eidul Fitr.
As seats are limited and number of candidates high, every year there is a tough competition for admission to top colleges. In the Lahore board alone, 13,357 candidates earned A plus grade. Keeping this in view, even top students apply for admission to the college of their choice in more than one group – among science, computer and arts – to secure their place. Sometimes, it seems students are more interested in getting admission to a good college than the discipline they want to study.
Besides a few top public colleges in the province, educationists as well as parents believe masses were losing faith in the public sector because of relatively lower quality of high education and non-serious attitudes of college teachers.
The father of a student who obtained A plus grade in the Lahore board said he would prefer his son studies in a private college because of Punjab Higher Education Department’s “non-serious attitude”. Citing an example, he said, “Public colleges relieve students from regular classes some two to four months before annual examinations but private ones make students work hard until the beginning of the examinations.”
Despite several calls and text messages to Punjab Higher Education Secretary Abdullah Khan Sumbal to discuss the post-results situation and admission issues, he did not respond.
In order to fill gaps between service users and providers of education in public sector schools, an experiment has been conducted by the Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan (CRCP) to develop tehsil and district level school councils.
The experiment conducted in four districts – Jhelum, Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin and Gujranwala – has showed dividends in terms of aggregating parental voice and providing them access to decision-making corridors at tehsil and district level. Earlier, education department officials at these levels were inaccessible to school councils.
CRCP Manager (Governance) Mudassar Alam Tahirkheli says the tehsil and district level school councils were constituted through an electoral process. During the last two years, he says, the CRCP field team members visited at least 756 school councils, mobilised 5,099 council members and conducted 219 meetings with education department officials.
He says the tehsil and district school councils in the abovementioned districts have taken 524 citizen initiatives, out of which district education management took action on 118 applications regarding missing facilities in schools, including teachers. He, however, admits there was no application or demand for provision of grounds in schools.
Tahirkheli says 72 public representatives in the four selected districts also signed commitment letters to make education a priority in their campaign in upcoming local government elections. He says these public representatives along with the tehsil and district school councils enrolled 1,190 out-of-school children as part of the Chief Minister’s Enrolment Campaign in the four districts before schools closed for summer.
The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority has issued a licence to the University of Management and Technology to launch its first state-of-the-art radio channel.
The channel will include university events, entertainment programmes, talk shows, youth forums and other education-related programmes. The FM radio station will be on air on 98.2MHz over a radius of 30km.
UMT Rector Dr Hassan Sohaib Murad says the radio service will be utilised for educational and entertainment purposes. Through this channel, he says, the university will present Pakistan’s positive image and highlight important academic, economical and social issues prevailing in the country. He says UMT teachers as well as students will play a pivotal role through radio journalism.
Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2014
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