Moalims

The government run Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) has increased its fee by up to 50 pc. QAU, which has always remained a popular choice for middle class, high achieving students, raised their Ph.D fee by up to 50pc.

According to the fee structure on their website, fees for Ph.D was Rs41, 638 in the spring of 2014 while fees for fall 2015 has been hiked up to Rs62, 622.

Fee for M.phil has seen an increase of 33 pc. Students had to pay Rs38, 883 per semester for M.Phil in the spring of 2014 while they have to fork out Rs51,660 this year.

A 28pc increase was seen in fee for M.Sc and MBA programmes while a 25pc raise was decided for their undergraduate degrees with students now having to pay Rs59, 200 per semester.

A student of the university said, “We are troubled over this unprecedented fee hike. This is a public sector university and fee should not be increased by more than 10pc annually.”

Some students while talking to Dawn said they requested the federal government to take notice of this fee hike by the university. One student said, “We appreciate the federal government for taking an action against elite schools when they were charging increased fee. The same action should be taken against any public sector institute for drastically increasing their fee.”

When Dawn tried to get a statement from QAU’s Vice Chancellor Javed Ashraf, he refused to discuss the issue. When asked what the rationale behind the massive hike was he said, “I’ll not give you my view point on this issue”.

According to the HEC guidelines, universities cannot increase fee by more than 10pc annually. The HEC chairman, Dr Mukhtar Ahmed, said he was told by QAU administration that they had increased the fee on average by 15 pc and that too after two years.

He said, “In three departments they increased fee by 20pc. I will look into the matter.”

Seminar stresses importance of CPEC

The Numl rector, retired Maj-Gen Ziauddin, said the China-Pak Economic Corridor (CPEC) was not a road, rail or sea linkage with China but a complete road map of the future market i.e. the Middle East, Central Asian States and Africa.

He said Europe and the US were nowhere as far as a future consumer market was concerned. He was addressing the seminar organised by the Pakistan Studies Department of Numl on Thursday. He said, “CPEC is a fate changer.”

The other speakers also highlighted the importance of CPEC and stressed it was imperative to get maximum benefits of this mega project. A number of faculty members and students attended the seminar and shared their views on the issue with the speaker.

Speakers included the chairman of Pak Studies Department of Numl, Retired Brig. Wasiq Ahmed Khan, Dr Mohammad Khan, Executive Director Silk Root Center Dr. Ijlal Hussainpur, Dr Saeed Ahmed, Vice President Confucius Institute, Dr. Zhang Daojian.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2015