Author Topic: Quaid-i- Azam University enters limbo  (Read 1606 times)

Offline fizza bano

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Quaid-i- Azam University enters limbo
« on: June 16, 2010, 07:35:31 AM »
Quaid-i- Azam University enters limbo
ISLAMABAD: Operations at Quaid-i- Azam University (QAU) have virtually come to standstill and brain drain has set in motion due to a significant delay from the chancellor’s office in formulating the syndicate of the university.

Syndicate is the final decision-making body of the university which is formed by the president of Pakistan who is its chancellor.

“The QAU has held four ‘Selection Boards’ but appointment letters cannot be issued unless the syndicate approves all the appointments. Some of the selected candidates have either joined other institutions or have left the country,” said Dr Gulraiz Akhter, Academic Staff Association (ASA) secretary.

ASA has been raising serious concerns over the delay in formulation of syndicate of the university for several months now.

The university has sent a panel of experts to the president to get names of the eight-member syndicate approved, which include a member of the Parliament, a judge of Supreme Court (SC), A reputed scholar and other appropriate persons, but to no avail.

Despite the fact that all brilliant candidates are gradually turning to other opportunities, the president has not sent an approved list of syndicate members. It is now almost a year that the university is without its final decision-making body.

During a meeting of ASA, members said that presently the university is being run without a syndicate and a very large number of pending cases have piled up that need approval of the syndicate.

Urging the president to take notice of the situation or to delegate the powers to someone else, the ASA representatives said that no PhD students have been admitted to the university in the past six months, contrary to the practice in previous years when on average 150 to 200 students used to be enrolled every year in PhD programmes.

On the other hand, a large number of PhD candidates have been denied the right to hold PhD title due to the absence of Syndicate despite the fact that their theses have been judged as satisfactory. Several important decisions of Academic Council regarding new teaching programmes, new courses and admission criteria including Graduate Record Examination (GRE) are also pending for the same reason.

It has been pointed out that several departments are under crisis and have difficulty in running their teaching programmes which were planned on the assumption that the selected candidate will be available for taking up their duties in time as per past practice.

The ASA representatives noted that salaries of the faculty members on Tenure Track System (TTS) have not been revised even once, while the salaries of faculty members employed on Basic Pay Scales (BPS) have been revised repeatedly in annual budgets of the federal government.

“It is feared that with the salaries on TTS virtually frozen, public sector universities will lose their productive faculty members to private sector where the salaries are periodically adjusted upward in line with the ongoing inflation rate,” said a professor.Daily times