Govt Colleges Losing Enrolment Ratio
Lahore:September 16: Lack of sufficient seats along with distrust among parents and students have drastically brought down the admission ratio at public sector colleges, as mere 21 percent student who passed matriculation examination get enrolled in government colleges in Lahore, Daily Times learnt on Sunday.
Statistics available with this scribe shows that parents and students’ distrust at public sector alma maters and low seating capacity of these colleges providing huge and profitable business to private sector colleges who are charging high fees.
According to data and figures, 1,38,531 students passed the matriculation examination this year out of which only 30,000 students were able to get enrolled in public sector colleges in different programmes of morning and evening shifts.
Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city according to population, has only 41 colleges including 19 of boys and 23 of girls, which, experts say, are not enough according to burgeoning population of city.
However, the data do not include the students admitted in Government College University (GCU) which gave admissions to students not only from Lahore but from across the country. Around 1200 students took admission in the GCU belonging to all the provinces of country.
Private sector mafia is also very strong at schools and universities level who charge higher fees against low quality education however there are only a few institutions providing quality education against the higher fees.
The remaining 79 percent students who do not get admissions in government colleges due to limited seats have moved towards private colleges whose performance is not as good as private schools.
A normal private sector college charged Rs 12000 to Rs 20000 per year for intermediate whereas colleges located in posh areas charge Rs 20000 to Rs 30000 from students for intermediate programmes.
While talking to Daily Times, parents and students expressed their dissatisfaction on limited seating capacity in government sector colleges and demanded high ups and education department to increase seats to weaken influence of private colleges and their hegemony. A father of three, Kamran whose children are studying at private colleges said his children only wanted to study at top government colleges including GCU, Civil Lines College and some others with good repute but was unable to get admissions due to insufficient seats. He further said due to his distrust on quality of other colleges’, he preferred private college which is charging Rs 20,000 per year.
A student belonging to Raiwind said he got more than 900 hundreds marks in matriculation and wanted to do FSc from GCU, but in vain. “Although my parents cannot afford the fee of the private college, but they stopped me taking admission in other colleges.
He demanded the Higher Education Department to increase seats at government colleges so that as much as students could be adjusted there.Daily Times.
