HYDERABAD, May 6: The vice-chancellor of the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan Rajput has said that 99 per cent of the 4,800 university students devote their time to academic activities while only a handful who have no interest in studies hold protest demonstrations.

Mr Rajput said at the "point of view" programme organised by the press club on Saturday as part of the club’s golden jubilee celebrations that the university had formed an advisory committee tasked with solving students’ problems at grass-root level and denied reports about students’ boycott of classes.

He said that the university, rated number one in the province and number two in the country by the Higher Education Commission (HEC), was an ISO-certified institution with 45 PhDs and 108 masters among its faculty. Mr Rajput said that the university had launched many mega projects with the financial assistance of HEC. The university had a library of international standard equipped with Internet facilities.

It had signed linkages with three American universities, three British universities, an Australian and a Japanese university and sent 42 faculty members abroad for PhD, he said.

He hoped that 75 per cent of the faculty would comprise PhDs by 2010. Another distinction of university was that it was the only engineering university in the country with 12 approved supervisor professors, he added.

Mr Rajput said that it was a proof to the high reputation of the university that 25 public and private sector companies and corporations were conducting interviews at the campus to recruit engineers.

Registrar Dr Aslam Uqaili and Ghulam Sarwar Kandhar put in "we are trying to protect our small island as far as possible". The students though had the disadvantage of coming from interior Sindh but with four years of exhaustive teaching and training they could enable themselves to compete with anybody, anytime and at any place, they said.