Students urge govt to scrap self-finance scheme

Welcome abolition of self-finance in medical colleges

By Khalid Khattak

LAHORE: THE recent announcement of Punjab Chief Minister regarding abolition of self-finance scheme for admission to the medical colleges has given hope to hundreds of prospective students of engineering, pharmacy and other demand driven disciplines.They are of the view that the government should ensure merit based admission in all disciplines without any discrimination. They believe self-finance scheme for admissions in engineering, other professional studies and even in general education was also depriving deserving students as were being deprived in medical colleges.Talking to The News, a number of students welcomed the recent decision regarding abolition self-finance scheme for admission to medical colleges of the province. Nonetheless they demanded the government to abolish such schemes from all the institutions offering professional as well as general education.Fahad, a student, said admission on self-finance basis should be abolished from all the public sector colleges and universities so that admission and educational facilities could be provided only to intelligent and deserving students. He was of the view that discipline of engineering and pharmacy were as important as that of medical. He said students now hoped that the government would also make efforts to eliminate self-finance schemes from other colleges and universities especially those offering professional education. Another student, Bilal, said seats reserved for self finance quota should be merged with merit seats so that more and more talented students could avail the opportunity to study at public sector institutions. He said poor but talented students could not afford education in private sector institutions because these were costly as compared to public sector institutions.According to the Punjab University (PU) website a student seeking admission on self-finance basis has to pay Rs 2, 50,000 for admission in, any one of, pharmacy, architecture and engineering programme of the university whereas Rs 200,000 are charged from a student seeking admission in BBA (Hons) in Banking and Finance, Insurance and Risk Management, MBA, BCom and MCom etc under the said scheme.Similarly, the Government College University (GCU), Lahore College for Women University (LCWU), Kinnaird College and many other public sector colleges and universities of the province offer admission on self finance basis. However, those who are at the helm are very critical of the emerging situation saying self-finance scheme for admission was introduced by the government for resource generation adding seats on financial basis were normally over and above the merit seats.Talking to The News, vice-chancellors (VCs) of various public sector universities said universities were ready to drop the self-finance scheme provided that government ensured matching grants as resource generation was certainly a tough job. “All the universities do not conduct examinations or grant affiliations like the Punjab University”, said one of the VCs, on condition of anonymity, adding these exercises were certainly sources of revenue. “But this is not the case with all the universities,” he said adding that admissions on self-finance basis were certainly helping institutions generate their resources.He said if the government ensured provision of appropriate funding for universities, public sector institutions would not hesitate to abolish self finance scheme for admission in all the disciplines.

Source: The News International
Monday, June 16, 2008