PESHAWAR: Thousands of students, who get higher education as private candidates, would no longer be able to continue their education after March 31 as Higher Education Commission (HEC) has directed the universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to stop enrolment of private students for BA and MA examinations.

However, HEC and universities in the province have not developed any alternate system for private students, who are in-service or couldn’t get admission in colleges and universities for multiple reasons, according to sources.

Out of the 30 public sector universities, this scribe got data of a few according to which 30,000 students appeared as private candidate in the Bachelor of Arts (BA) examination conducted by Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan last year, 25,000 students in University of Peshawar, 20,450 in Bannu University and more than 11,000 appeared in the examination conducted by Gomal University Dera Ismail Khan.

HEC has stopped universities from enrolling them without devising alternative system

“The same number of private candidates also appeared in the Master of Arts (MA) examinations,” said sources.

They said that getting education at BA and MA level as private candidates was stopped by HEC as replacement of four-year Bachelor of Studies programme already launched across the province.

Initially, HEC had directed the universities not to enrol private candidates for BA and MA examinations from December 31, 2020. However, on the request of the vice-chancellors of public sector universities, HEC extended the date till March 31, 2021, sources said.

Gomal University Vice-chancellor Prof Iftikhar Ahmed told Dawn that HEC did not provide any clear guidelines for the students, who already received BA/BSc degrees and wanted to get regular admission in MA/MSc or were waiting for examinations as private candidates.

Similarly, he said, HEC also didn’t provide any guidelines for the students appeared in third year BA/BSc examinations and would be appearing in 4th year examinations in the coming year besides those, who were waiting for results of BA/BSc 4th year examinations.

“With the implementation of HEC decision, I am afraid that we will be doing wrong against the access to education policy of the government and future of thousands of private students will be at stake,” said Prof Iftikhar.

He said that the vice-chancellors of all public sector universities in the province had demanded of HEC through a unanimously passed resolution that the phasing out of BA/BSc and MA/MSc should be extended to 2023.

Prof Iftikhar said that the universities, which were facing acute financial problems, used to generate 33 per cent of their revenue from its own resources through the fees collected from the private candidates.

He said that students in Karachi staged protest demonstration time and again against the HEC decision.

He said that stopping students from getting privately education was also in violation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under which it was binding on the government to ensure students’ access to education. He said that the number of private students at BA and MA level was equal to the regular students.

“Usually students opt for private education due to their nature of job, un-affordability of colleges and universities fee and missing admission to colleges and universities,” he said.

About the private girl students, Prof Iftikhar said that conservative families didn’t allow their female members to go out of houses for education so getting education as private candidates was a good option for them.

A senior official in University of Peshawar told Dawn that UoP had launched distance education in 2010 for the students, who were unable to continue regular education.

He said that UoP had also established its centres at district level but HEC stopped the distance education programme in 2017, terming it low quality.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2021