• Students’ enrollment plunges from 1.4m to below one million
• Govt’s policy to end two-year graduation programme, poor internet connectivity among main causes

ISLAMABAD: The country’s largest distance-learning university, Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), has been facing a constant decline in admissions for the last five years for various reasons.

An official document of the university available with Dawn reveals that the university had enrolled over 1.41 million students in both spring and autumn sessions in 2019 and the number has now come down to less than a million in 2023.

The data shows that in 2019, as many as 711,758 students had sought admissions to the AIOU’s spring session and 699,261 in autumn whereas in 2020, the university enrolled 1,228,416 students (592,919 in spring and 635,497 in autumn), followed by 1,101,186 admissions in 2021 (541,225 in spring and 559,961 in autumn).

In 2022, the university enrolled 1,021,255 students (498,300 in spring and 522,955 in autumn sessions) whereas last year (2023), the AIOU faced a major setback when 991,898 students got admission -- 487,219 in the spring and 504,679 in the autumn session.

When contacted, a spokesperson for the AIOU Dr Bakht Rawan claimed that the autumn session of 2023 saw a little increase in admissions compared to the autumn session of 2022.

The spokesperson, while talking about the overall decline in admissions during the last five years, said there were various justified reasons behind the decline.

Dr Rawan further said the abolishment of the two-year BA/B.Sc programme by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) was one of the main reasons behind the decline in admission. He said the university used to register a large number of students in the two-year B.A/B.Sc programmes.

The spokesperson further said the four-year BS programme and the new two-year associate degree programmes were not as attractive as BA/B.Sc.

Similarly, he said the abolishment of two-year M.A/M.Sc is also one of the reasons behind the decline in admission.

“Whereas, you know, Covid-19 also disturbed educational activities for around one year, while our two signature teacher training programmes, such as PTC-CT, have also been abolished, which is also a factor,” he said.

Sources said that besides other factors, the significant increase in the university fees during the last five years could also be one of the reasons for the drastic decline in admissions.

The sources in the AIOU said a faulty online admission system and the non-availability of the internet in far-flung areas of the country were also contributing to the decline in admissions.

They stated that the university accepted online applications for all BS and MS programmes, with no option for manual submission of forms. The sources said during admission sessions, students often complain about faults in the online system.

However, Dr Rawan said the AIOU management would look into this issue as well, but “personally, I don’t think that online admission system is reason behind the decline; rather, I would say, it is helpful to increase enrollments,” he said.

To a query about the increase in fee, he said universities increased fees as per a set pattern, adding that the fee of the AIOU was still “very reasonable” and less than half of the fee charged by other public sector universities.

The spokesperson further said the new Vice Chancellor (VC), Dr Nasir Mahmood, who was appointed a couple of months ago, had already taken steps to improve the quality of education and enrollment.

“You will see significant improvement in our system in coming years as Dr Nasir is aware of all issues of the university and he has been making efforts to bring improvement,” he concluded.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2024