KARACHI, Jan 7: The Sindh Education Minister, Dr Hamida Khuhro, on Friday urged the private sector universities and degree awarding institutes to provide education at affordable cost and not to limit their services to the elite class only.

Chairing a meeting of the heads of the private sector's chartered universities and institutes, believed to be the first of its kind, the minister called on them to grant more scholarships and free-ships to poor and bright students and to be transparent about it.

The meeting was organized by the Charter Inspection and Evaluation Committee (CIEC) of the Sindh Education department. It was attended by heads of about 22 private institutions, members of the charter committee and other high officials.

The CIEC Chairman, Dr S.M. Qureshi, briefed the participants about the outcome of the exercise of monitoring, evaluation and grading of chartered institutions conducted by the committee.

He assured the institutions of all-out help and support for overcoming the weaknesses observed for their better functioning and promotion of quality education in the province's private sector.

It was observed in the meeting that some of the institutions were charging higher fees but not providing good quality of education, while some were deficient in faculty and had been unable to fulfil requirements identified officially with regard to establishment of a varsity or degree-awarding institute, said a source privy to the meeting.

Dr Khuhro noted that the significance of close-coordination and cooperation between private sector higher education institutions and the government of Sindh could be reached only when private institutions functioned orderly and aimed at the objective of better performance for imparting quality education to the deprived youth of Sindh at reasonable cost.

While appreciating the services rendered by the private sector and sharing the responsibility of the government in promoting higher education, the minister stressed that any doubt in the minds of the public, that educational institutions were merely business-oriented and were providing services to the elite class, needed to be removed.

The heads of institutions referred to problems faced by them in fulfilling the government's requirements, upon which the minister said that those would be looked into openly and in the larger interests of the public, said an official communiqué.

The representatives of private institutions also drew the attention of the chair towards minimum requirement of land, endowment, lack of PhDs in the country and frequent inspections and duplication of monitoring by the HEC.

It was resolved in the meeting that the institutions established before the issuance of guidelines by the Sindh government for establishing new degree awarding institutions in the private sector would fulfil all obligations before February 2007, and inform the Sindh education department and the CIEC about their progress.

The institutions decided to prepare and publish their first version of the code in a year's time, added the official source.