KARACHI, Sept 4 More than 1,400 students who have passed their matric exams with computer science group this year have been deprived of pursuing their further studies in the same discipline as the number of seats available at government colleges of the city is limited and not enough.

Despite the fact that the trend of choosing computer science education in lieu of biology among the Class IX and X students is growing with each passing year, the irony is that the faculty of computer science is only available in 27 colleges — 14 male and 13 female colleges — out of the total 124 government colleges in the city.

It is for this reason that only 800 male and 700 female candidates have been given admissions to the first-year classes in the 27 government colleges having facilities of computer science laboratories.

Whereas the total number of applicants seeking admission to first-year classes in computer science colleges under the Centralised Admission Policy were around 3,000 — over 1500 male and 1380 female students.

Answering a question about the fate of candidates who failed to get admission to first-year classes in computer science group despite passing their matric exams with the same discipline, an official of the CAP committee said that most candidates would be accommodated in science (pre-engineering) group while remaining candidates who had mentioned commerce group as their second choice in the admission forms would be given admission to commerce faculty in government colleges.

Admitting the presence of an upward trend among students in pursuing computer science education, Prof Iftikhar Aazmi, who had been tasked with monitoring the process of admissions under the Centralized Admission Policy by the Sindh education department, emphasised the need for opening more computer science faculties in colleges.

Prof Aazmi, who is also the general secretary of the Karachi chapter of the Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association, said that the scrutiny of forms during the admissions process indicated that trend.

This trend was specially observed in students of Baldia, Orangi, Nazimabad, North Nazimabad, Federal B Area, New Karachi and Gulshan-i-Iqbal areas, he said.

He said that on the one hand there were only a few government colleges where the faculty of computer science was available and, on the other hand, computer labs of these colleges were facing serious funding problems, besides the shortage of computer science teachers.

“Computer science technology is progressing at such a fast speed that its software and other parts become obsolete after every one or two years. It has also been seen that colleges are not provided with funds to upgrade their labs,” Prof Aazmi said.