LAHORE, Dec 28: As many as 186 students of two autonomous colleges and three universities have been awarded scholarships worth Rs2.8 million, which amount to about 27 per cent of the scholarships announced by the Punjab government for some 1,524 postgraduate students of 50 government and autonomous institutions across the province.

The government had announced in September that scholarships would be offered to post-graduate students on a “need-cum-merit” basis under the newly launched Governor’s Post-graduate Scholarship Scheme.

The money would come from the interest generated on the Rs500 million Endowment Fund which has been created by the Punjab government to help students in professional disciplines at 41 colleges and nine universities across the province.

The scheme has been launched to encourage students to study science and IT disciplines at the post-graduate level.

The provision of a major chunk of the funds to 186 students of the “privileged” institutions leaves only Rs7.7 million for 1,338 students of the remaining 45 colleges and universities.

The discrepancy has arisen because the autonomous institutions “have been given the amount (for scholarships) according to their demands” while a fixed amount has been provided to the government institutions, say officials of the Punjab education department.

While the students of government institutions will get Rs8,200 that would cover their one-year tuition fee and hostel expenses, those of the autonomous educational institutions will get scholarships according to their higher fee structure. The students of the GCU, the LCWU and the Kinnaird College for Women have been given about Rs20,000 per student.

“The students of autonomous institutions securing scholarships also include those who are paying between Rs25,000 and Rs100,000 per year on a self-finance basis,” claim officials. “This is despite the fact that such students aren’t entitled to any scholarship offered by the government,” the officials added.

The KC was provided 20 scholarships at a time when its post-graduate degree was not recognized at any level. Moreover, the KC is running all post-graduate programmes on a self-finance basis.

A KC student, who received the scholarship, told this reporter that the college management found it pretty difficult to select students according to the government’s need-cum-merit criteria as nobody was presumed “needy” in the college.

The heads of some institutions said most scholarships had been awarded to students on the basis of merit. “The needy students with poor academic record have not been considered for the scholarship,” they said.

Senior teachers of the Islamia College, Railway Road, and Dyal Singh College say the government should not have set different scholarship criteria for autonomous and government institutions.

“We are unable to understand why the government is so generous with the autonomous institutions. We believe that the government could have excluded the autonomous institutions from the scheme and included those government institutions which offer post-graduation in languages,” they said.