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Govt gears up to launch BS (Honours) in 26 colleges

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Govt gears up to launch BS (Honours) in 26 colleges
LAHORE, June 19: The Punjab higher education department is fine tuning its ambitious programme of launching four-year honours degree programme in 26 colleges as well as setting up board of governors (BoGs) to run these colleges “effectively”.

The department is planning to launch four to five honours degree programmes, including one information technology related programme in each college. It has sensitised the principals of the respective colleges to assess their requirements in terms of laboratories, libraries and human resources to launch these programmes.

The Higher Education Council, represented by vice-chancellors of various universities, is meeting on Tuesday (June 22) to finalise the implementation of the BS (Honours) programme in the selected colleges from the next academic session.

In the meanwhile, the higher education department is asking the respective colleges’ principals and directors as well as commissioners and district coordination officers to propose names of persons, who can be nominated as members of the BoGs. “The proposed BoGs will be able to take quick decisions in academic matters including hiring of qualified faculty members. They will also be given powers to generate revenue,” says higher education secretary Ahad Khan Cheema.

He, however, said the BoGs would not be able to generate resources from students’ fees because they would not be authorised to enhance tuition fees. “The selected colleges’ proposed BoGs’ financial worries had already been eased out by working out salary cost for new teachers and allocated Rs250 million for this purpose. Around Rs10 million will be given as an additional grant along with the existing budget to each of the selected 26 (16 boys and 10 girls) colleges,” Mr Cheema said.

With regard to the launching of the BS (Honours) programme, the higher education department had already adopted the Higher Education Commission (HEC) courses and decided that the students would be assessed through a mixed system of internal and external examinations.

The Higher Education Council’s sub-committee headed by Prof Dr Muhammad Nizamuddin had already agreed that the internal assessment of honours degree programme students would have 40 per cent weightage, while the external evaluation by affiliating university would have weightage of 60 per cent.

Though the higher education secretary says that the selected 26 colleges in 12 districts had Ph.D and M.Phil faculty members, the Affiliation Committee of the Punjab University (PU) had inspected 19 out of 26 colleges for the launch of one honours degree programme each and reported that 10 colleges did not require labs for proposed honours programmes in the subjects of English, Urdu, Islamic Studies, economics and political science. The remaining nine colleges, where honours programme in chemistry, physics, mathematics, botany, zoology, psychology and mass communication had been proposed for launching, needed massive upgradation of infrastructure. Similarly, 14 colleges needed more faculty members for the launch of honours programme.

In case of launching four to five honours programmes in the selected 26 colleges, PU sources said each college would be required to massively upgrade its all facilities including classrooms, labs, equipment, libraries and faculty.

Sources also expressed their apprehensions about the affiliation of these colleges’ honours programmes with different universities offering varying standards. There are also issues with regard to evaluation of students in the semester system as well as a college’s affiliation with two universities – for regular degree and postgraduate programmes and honours programme.

The higher education secretary says the department has plans to get these 26 colleges affiliated to seven or eight universities including a couple of private universities and degree-awarding institutions.

Besides three existing affiliating varsities – PU; Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU), Multan; and Islamia University, Bahawalpur (IUB); the higher education department is planning to get some of the 26 colleges affiliated to the University of Sargodha, University of Gujrat, private sector’s Forman Christian College (FCC), a chartered university, and Lahore School of Economics.

However, when contacted, FCC Rector Prof Dr Peter H Armacost said it would not be possible for the university to affiliate Punjab government colleges for BS (Honours) programme. “The FCC is currently striving to get accreditations from the United States and the United Kingdom,” he said.

Stating that the FCC’s charter does not allow it to affiliate any college till 2014, Prof Armacost said that it would grant affiliation to only those colleges that would come up to the FCC standards.

A senior official also told Dawn that the PU had launched semester programme at its masters’ classes and almost 75 per cent of them had so far reverted to the annual examination system. “It will be very difficult to run honours degree programme in public sector colleges for want of resources, qualified staff and proper teaching, assessment and monitoring,” he observed.

Of 26 selected government colleges, 19 are currently affiliated with the PU, four with the BZU and three with the IUB.

The Punjab University affiliated colleges are: Government College for Women, Samanabad, Lahore; Government College of Science, Wahdat Road, Lahore; Government Islamia College, Civil Lines, Lahore; Government M.A.O. College, Lahore; Government Islamia College for Women, Cooper Road, Lahore; Government Fatima Jinnah College for Women, Choona Mandi, Lahore; Government Queen Mary College for Women, Lahore; Government College, Attock; Government Postgraduate College, Asghar Mall, Rawalpindi; Government Gordon College, Rawalpindi; Government Postgraduate College for Women, Satellite Town, Rawalpindi; Government Postgraduate College, Chakwal; Government College for Women, Chandni Chowk, Sargodha; Government College, Samanabad, Faisalabad; Government College for Women, Madina Town, Faisalabad; Government College, Satellite Town, Gujranwala; Government Zamindar College, Gujrat, and Government Murray College, Sialkot.

The colleges affiliated with the BZU are: Government College, Bosan Road, Multan; Government College for Women, Kutchery Road, Multan; Government College, Sahiwal; and Government College, Dera Ghazi Khan.

The colleges affiliated with the IUB are: Government S.E. College, Bahawalpur; Government Sadiq Degree College for Girls, Bahawalpur; and Government Khawaja Farid College, Rahim Yar Khan.Dawn

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