HYDERABAD, March 10: As many as 355 students of the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology were conferred BE, ME and PhD degrees at the 10th convocation of the university held at the Jamshoro campus on Monday.

Four students, including two girls, received gold medals as top of the faculty and best graduates and 18 students were awarded silver medals. Four scholars were awarded PhD degrees and 40 Masters of Engineering degrees.

Caretaker Provincial Minister Shujaat Ali Baig presided over the convocation.

Speaking on the occasion, he said the government wanted the higher education to fulfil social, economic and technical needs of the country. He said it was an honour for MUET to have had achieved high ranking among public sector universities. This he said was a paradigm change to show how an innovative and forward- looking institution could work under the guidance of government and the HEC to provide quality education to masses.

He lauded the role of Vice-Chancellor MUET Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan Rajput for vision, foresight, guidance and leadership for achieving remarkable progress through strict adherence to the parameters of quality education.

“It is bliss that in this era of competition, the job market has opened their niches for MUET graduates by conducting recruitment test,” said the minister.

He appreciated the MUET for higher numbers of Ph.D adding extension of postgraduate programmes would further provide an avenue to its faculty to improve their qualifications.

He said promotion of research culture was always an objective of a university and MUET was successfully moving in that direction.

To achieve international standards and equate harmony and excellence, institutions need to extend their best and for this a linkage programme had been established between MUET and other top universities of developed countries like the US, the UK, Japan and Australia.

Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan Rajput congratulating passing out graduates appreciated the concern of the government and the HEC for supporting institutions of the province.

He said the last few years had been landmark in terms of the MUET’s achievements which presented an ideal prologue to liberal and forward looking policies of the government in the field of higher education. He said the role of state-of-the-art libraries was important in imparting quality education.

He said the University believes industrial training and internship during summer vacation for senior students was essential for value-added education.He said the MUET was maintaining linkages with industries, corporate sector, government and public sector organizations by providing consultancy services and trainings. As a result many reputed and professional government and non-government organizations had been coming to campus to conduct tests and interviews of final year students and offering jobs.

He said the MUET had allocated Rs1 million per Ph.D student for equipment and software for research. He said among engineering universities, the MUET had the highest number of HEC approved supervisors, around 15.

Shujaat Ali Baig gave away gold medal award to Miss Fahmina Syed, Miss Shazia Shaikh, Asim Hussain and Zakir and silver medal awards to Rizwan Memon, Khan Jee, Abdul Haq Tunio and Madam Khadija.—APP