KARACHI, Nov 12: The St Joseph’s College is observing its diamond jubilee this year. Founded in 1948 to educate women with the aim of “making them perfect citizens of the brave new world” (as Pakistan was described by the founders of the college soon after Independence), St Joseph’s has grown phenomenally.

It started with 66 students on its rolls. Today there are 1984 students studying in this institution of higher education. The faculty has also grown to 67. Starting with the arts faculty, the college launched its science faculty in 1953 and moved on to enrol students for commerce in 2006.

The St Joseph’s College traces its beginnings to the Congregation of the Daughters of the Cross founded in Belgium in 1833. Nuns from the congregation came to Karachi in 1862 and the following year a girls’ school was founded with 10 children as the first entrants. The college came 85 years later when Karachi’s population grew as the city became the federal capital.

St Joseph’s soon made its mark on the country as many of its graduates went on to win high positions in all walks of national life.

The college was nationalised in Sept 1972 along with all other private colleges in Pakistan under the education policy of the first People’s Party Bhutto government. A link — though a tenuous one — with the Congregation was maintained for a few years through Sister Mary Emily who continued as the principal of the college until her retirement in 1981. But the management was taken over by the education authorities. Subsequently the principals were appointed by the education department.

In May 2005 General Pervez Musharraf’s government decided to restore the St Joseph’s College to its “right owners” as the members of the mission were termed in the documents that recorded the return of the institution to the Daughters of the Cross. In the intervening decades several denominational educational institutions had been handed back to their owners with the St Joseph’s College being one of the last few to be returned.

In the last three years since the college reverted to the Congregation, it has worked to regain its old standards while charging modest fees. One of the fears expressed by the critics of its “denationalisation” that a shopping mall would be erected on the prime two-acre plot that was leased to the St Joseph’s College in perpetuity for educational purposes by the Cantonment Board have proved to be unfounded. The college continues to function as a girls’ college with no commercialisation having taken place.