Staff Reporter
The abrupt discontinuation of BS Geography Program of Islamabad Model Postgraduate College H-8 by the authorities without consultation of the relevant stakeholders will not only spoil the laborious efforts behind the launch of this program but also incur huge financial loss in terms of wastage of the entire relevant infrastructure.
According to an official source, the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) issued directives to discontinue BS Geography Program of Islamabad Model Postgraduate College H-8 citing the reason of thin enrollment.
However the teachers have termed it uneconomical as six out of seven Geography teachers will be left with no students to teach after two years while two labs, equipment and other infrastructure will have no practical utility.
Talking to media, a senior Professor of the college recalled all those challenges the college had to face two decades ago while planning and launching M.Sc Geography program in this biggest and one of the oldest colleges in the metropolis.
After abolishment of M.Sc program in the country under the direction of Higher Education Commission, the college switched to B.S Program in Geography two years back.
“No doubt the enrollment was low but instead of doing efforts to increase the enrollment, FDE discontinued the program thinking if this is the only solution.
It is beyond my understanding why the authorities were playing such havoc; there is certainly a method in this madness”, he ironically remarked.
Another professor of the college said, “The policies of FDE are responsible for thin enrollment in B.S Programs of ICT colleges as the authority has fixed extremely high fee for ICT colleges.
Students prefer to get admission in the colleges of Rawalpindi. H-8 College is the only college which offers BS in Geography in Islamabad but due to extremely high fee of BS program, students choose Government College Asghar Mall Rawalpindi.”
“In the first semester of BS, the total fee is Rs 11000 in Asghar Mall College while in H-8 College the fee is over Rs 21000 while in the subsequent semesters Asghar Mall College charges Rs 2500 per semester while the fee in H-8 College is Rs 15000 in the subsequent semesters.”,
he said while emphasizing on reducing fee and fixed at par with the colleges of Rawalpindi in order to attract the students.
A representative of the Teachers Association said, “FDE is trying to abandon an already established Department of Geography without even any consultation with the college that has successfully run the Masters program since its inception back in 2004.
Geography department has been producing almost 100 percent result though the intake of students has not been very high but public institutions are not meant for business production units and cost-benefit hypothesis like an industry.”
“Colleges are under the umbrella of FDE but it does not mean the directorate is empowered to abandon any program without taking the stakeholders into confidence.
This hit and trial management will spoil and undo our efforts of setting up colleges in the past 50 years”, the representative observed.
“No one from the concerned authority has visited the Geography department before giving the directive of closure of program,” the representative said while urging the authority to send its team to college to ascertain the ground realities before making the decision arbitrarily.
