KARACHI, Feb 26 Students of several departments of the Karachi University on Wednesday staged a demonstration on the campus to protest against the introduction of the grade point average (GPA) system in place of the existing division system in the middle of their courses.

A large number of students assembled in front of the university's arts lobby and raised slogans against the GPA system and officials of their departments for introducing the system.

The students said that they had already completed their third and fourth semesters under the present division system, but the administration was introducing a new system in the middle of their courses.

Later, the protesting students went to the university's administration block to meet the vice-chancellor of the university.

The vice-chancellor was reportedly not available, and therefore the students met the university's students' adviser, Prof Tanveer Khalid. They brought the issue to her notice.

The adviser listened to the protesting students and assured them that she would arrange a meeting of the affected students with the chairmen of their respective departments in a couple of days.

According to the protesting students, the administration's decision to introduce the GPA system in the middle of their courses has not only badly affected the results of more than half of the students of departments where the system has been implemented, but in some cases a number of students would also have to revert to their previous semester classes.

Reiterating that their protest against the newly introduced GPA system would continue as long as the university administration did not withdraw it, the students said that had the university administration been sincere about introducing the new system, it would have announced the new system in the beginning of their courses, instead of imposing it on them when they already had passed four semesters.

They claimed that according to a notification issued by the university administration sometime back, the GPA system was supposed to be applied to the students of batch-2008, but some teachers had applied the new system to the students of batch of 2007.

However, when the university's dean of faculty of management and administrative sciences, Prof Abuzar Wajidi, was contacted by Dawn for his comments on the issue, he said that the situation might have had arisen due to some confusion among teachers regarding the GPA system.

He was optimistic that the issue would be resolved amicably in a couple of days.