LAHORE: Forman Christian (FC) College students on Wednesday launched a protest campaign against 300 per cent increase in summer internship fee.

A number of undergraduate students gathered outside the administration block and held a demonstration against the raise in summer internship fee from Rs10,000 to Rs40,000.

They said after giving autonomy to the college the administration had for the first time increased the fee of summer internships regardless of the number of credit hours.

They said the students were even against Rs10,000 fee because they had to give services at other organisations and increase in the fee for rendering service could not be justified.

They said the new internship fee is Rs15,000 for three credit hours, Rs26,000 for six, and Rs40,000 for 12.

They said former dean of Student Affairs and currently head of Academic Advising Cheryl Burke had failed to give any justification for the raise in fee and said the administration should charge Rs100,000 from them.However, the FC College spokesperson said the students gathered outside the administration block and raised the fee issue.

She said a dean of the concerned faculty had held talks with students and they dispersed peacefully.

She said the administration had increased the fee of the summer internship programmes due to inflation.

Conference: A two-day international conference on education under the theme of ‘Research and Development in Education for Sustainable Future’ started at the University of Education (UE), Township, on Wednesday.

Punjab Minister for Higher Education Raja Yasir Humayun was chief guest and a number of educationists, scholars and delegates around the globe were attending the conference.

The minister inaugurated the conference in which the national and international scholars will present 134 research papers.

Mr Humayun said the current government was giving importance to education and they were committed to increasing education budget every year according to the needs.

He said conferences should be organised to create the culture of research and development to improve education and its quality.

UE Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Rauf-i-Azam said international conferences on education were being organised under different themes for the last seven years consecutively and it could show their commitment with education.

He said research and development could not take place without education.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2019