Rizwan Haider/Ayesha Zahid
ISLAMABAD: Our educational institutes should pay more attention to the personality grooming of students, so they could face difficulties of professional field. At the moment culture of merely focusing on grades is prevailing. This was stated by Professor Dr Samina Amin Qadir, the Vice Chancellor of Fatima Jinnah Women University, in an exclusive interview with Daily The Patriot.
She is serving as a VC since July 2011 of the University which is the first in Punjab to provide higher education to just women. She got her degree in English literature and M.Ed. from Punjab University with flying colors. Later on, she pursued her M. Ed. in TEFL from University of Wales College of Cardiff and got her PhD degree in Linguistics from Lancaster University, England. She has been affiliated with FJWU in different positions and has been fulfilling her responsibilities gracefully.
While talking about the criteria of appointment of lecturers, she said that Varsity administration gives it utmost importance to appoint teachers only on the basis of their performance and merit. In response to a question regarding the entry criteria of FJWU, she said that University has an open merit system but 3% quota is allocated for disables and minorities. She said that we enroll hundreds of students from the far flung areas and so many of them are living in the hostels.
She said that semester system is way better than the annual system. While giving example of some Universities where she had taught in annual education system, she said in annual system students usually don’t bother about their attendance in classes and they just study during days of examination. In contrary to annual system, lecturers keep students on their toes in semester system and students remain busy in assignments, midterm and final term examinations. She further said that teachers are given more power in semester system, which eventually helps them to utilize their energies in better way to get better results from students.
She said that at the University level education system is improving, mainly because of Higher Education Commission but at the level of Colleges things are not looking good. She pointed out that number of teachers in the colleges can’t even differentiate between a research journal and a magazine.
Replying a question regarding quality of research work being done in the Universities, she said that overall quality of research work is improving but it is also a fact that better resources and funds dig out better research work. In her concluding remarks, she said that we are in no way, behind western system of education and stand in the same line when it comes to research. She said it’s just that they give more time and effort to their work and we must also do the same rather than finding a shortcut. She said in FJWU a student usually pay one lakh rupees for four semesters but other public sector Universities are charging over 80 thousand per semester; hence it would be unfair to talk on the equal opportunities of research work given to students.
Answering a question that concept of community work is quite popular in Universities of West; she said that we do try our level best to let our students contribute to the society. She said that University has made it mandatory for students to do 20 hours of community work in order to get the final degrees.
She said that government has provided students laptops, now it is up to the students that either they will use them for positive or negative purposes. She said that parents should also need to keep an eye on the children to make sure positive usage of internet and laptops. Because process of educations starts from homes, she added.