Long long time ago "education" was a welfare work, teachers in those days teach only for welfare, if any student in respect of his teacher tries to help him, the teacher not allows him as he thinks it might look like as a reward for his services. But now the education considered being a highly profitable business.
Pakistan is an underdeveloped country and about more than 70% population lives below the line of poverty. Where the daily income of a person can not meet his daily expanses, where 80% population can't even have clean water and sewerage facilities. Even with the government efforts to provide education to masses, we can still see huge fees in the institutes. Let's close our eyes from the private institutions, first take a look at the government universities, the yearly fees getting increment every year, without giving any consideration to the increment of a salaried person.
The yearly fees of the engineering program in NED (Government Supervised Educational Institute), or the B.S program in K.U (Government Supervised Educational Institute), the figures goes as above as 5 figures, how can it be possible for a person whose daily income is around Rs.500? This is the reason why we are still considered as underdeveloped.
How can we expect the growth of a tree if we not give preference to the nourishment of roots!
If this is the situation of the government funded universities, then what can you expect from the private institutions. Factually private institutions are now out of the range of middle and lower class community. This is the reason most of the private universities of Pakistan are associated with elite classes.
Despite getting funds from HEC, having attractive slogans of "welfare works" the private universities having minimum fee of Rs. 60000/ per semester, why the fees are way too high to catch? Simple! It's a business, so they are free to get as much profit as they plan, but then they should not be portraying themselves as "welfare" workers.
Institutes and universities should stick to their vision and policies, when we visit a university, we can see the vision statement shining on the walls with words, "we are building the nations, blah blah", but when we closely inspect the system, we see that these all beautiful words are having dark backgrounds. The students are kicked out of universities, just for not paying fees, blackmailed by showing their name on notice boards as fee defaulters. If they say that they are doing welfare work and running a welfare organization then they should do the same and then keep top priority as providing inexpensive and quality education. Students should be given benefits, and tolerances.
This can never happen without the involvement of government, this does not means that all the private institutions and universities should be nationalized, but they should be audited under the supervision of government officials.
By: Syed Owais Mukhtar
