BS programme draws ire of students, teachers in K-P

Academics say colleges lack faculty conversant with teaching BS courses

PESHAWAR: The Bachelor of Science (BS) programme launched in 93 colleges of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) has drawn the ire of students, who expressed that it has been launched without proper planning and has wasted their precious time.

Earlier, Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor Science (BSc) and Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) degrees were granted in two years and subsequent masters degrees in another two years. So, instead of acquiring a masters degree in four years, the students get a bachelors degree under the BS programme.

The four-year BS programme started as pilot project in specific districts colleges of K-P in April 2011. So far the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf led government has extended this programme to 93 out of 180 colleges across the province.



The students and teachers of different college expressed reservations over this programme. Talking to The Express Tribune, BS Botany student of Government Post Graduate College Mardan Riaz Khan said that as compared with universities, this programme is much affordable on college level but shortage of teachers and other required facilities for this programme has greatly affected student’s studies.

Riaz informed that government has not recruited new teachers for this programme while it runs through the help of existing teachers which has become extra burden for them and they not deliver it properly.

Another student of Government College Peshawar Subah Ullah said that there are no facilities for BS students in his college. He said that the existing teachers have no skill to teach the advance programme. “If a teacher hired in 90s, so how he will teach these advance courses without getting proper training,” he asked.

Subah said that BS is a semester’s based programme which needs proper research and high qualifications but the existing teacher’s capacity cannot fulfil the requirements of this programme.

“Firstly, BS programme is primary based on research and investigation but the problem is that we don’t have the required PhD scholars to run this programme successfully. Lack of the professional staff is the key issue,” a government college teacher in Peshawar said.

The teacher explained that the secondly, there is lack of professional and technical training programmes. “I have been teaching in BS programme for the last five years but I haven’t taken any kind of training to understand this system,” he informed.



He shared that mostly teacher who teach at BS level have never studied or conducted such researches.

“They have no know-how of the idea and purpose of this programme and our generations of the teacher have grown older for the system,” the teacher shared.

He said that mostly teachers have done their masters in 70, 80 and 90s where they have never experienced working in such systems as the out dated skills make them misfit in the system.

When contacted a senior official in KP Higher Education Department he shared on the condition of anonymity that according to the 1978 national education policy and policies onward, the two year BA/BSc and MA/MSC would be replaced by the new advance degrees programmes.

He said that currently BS programme has been started in 93 out of 180 male and female colleges while the PC-1 has been approved for hiring new staff, books and other facilities for this programme.

The official said that BS programme in college level is most fruitful for those who cannot afford the high fee and expenses of universities. He said that on college level the semester fee is around Rs5,000 per semester, while the public sector universities charged up to Rs50, 000 for the same faculties.

He shared that the introduction of BS programme in the colleges has increased access to higher education for poor sections of society and also boost the ratio of enrolment in higher education from present 5% to 10% in the province.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 23^rd, 2017.