ISLAMABAD, Nov 9: Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) has decided to revise and update all its bachelor-level courses to incorporate latest developments in curricula, official sources told Dawn.

A directive issued by Vice-Chancellor Dr Syed Altaf Hussain the other day has asked deans of Education, Arabic & Islamic Studies, and Science departments to update curricula of various disciplines falling under their respective faculties.

According to the sources, the university had been receiving complaints about the factual mistakes and outdated contents in the syllabus of various disciplines at bachelor level.

A senior professor of the university, who requested not to be named, told this reporter that revision of syllabus at bachelor level was a step long over due.

Initially, he said, the AIOU's courses were considered the best and its students were given weightage in the jobs' market and elsewhere. But of late, due to the apathetic attitude of the administration towards updated curriculum development, the university lost its credibility in terms of its syllabus.

As a result, the university was tagged as a factory that offered degrees ranging from matriculation to PhD level in almost every discipline, the professor said.

Right now, he said, the university was catering to the educational needs of more than 500,000 students from all areas of the country. Hence, the university is bound to offer quality education to its students, he maintained.

Being the second largest distance-learning university of the world, the AIOU needs to redeem its credibility as a quality educational institution of the country, the professor said.

Answering a question, he said the AIOU needed to set up a separate cell to continuously monitor latest happenings in various disciplines and, subsequently, incorporate them in the syllabus.

Though quite late, the university administration has taken a step in the right direction and everybody at the AIOU is hopeful that all departments concerned would actively respond to the vice-chancellor's directives, he said.