Protesting students want their degrees recognised by HEC

HEC spokesman says the issue has already been noted and will be solved soon

LAHORE: A large number of students of the Imperial College of Business Studies (ICBS) held a protest and a sit-in outside the Lahore Press Club on Thursday. They demanded that their degrees get attested by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan.

Students were of the view that the ICBS management, HEC, Punjab Higher Education Commission (PHEC) and Punjab Higher Education Department (HED) had misled them. They added that despite several assurances, their degrees were not being recognised by the authorities.

Sikandare Azam, a leader of the protest, told The Express Tribune that their only demand was that the departments concerned issue attested degree to students of the ICBS. He said, “It has been one and a half year since we had completed our programmes, but we are yet to receive our degrees.” Sikandar said that they were demanding that the relevant bodies, the Punjab government and Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif should take notice of the situation and help them get their degrees recognised.



According to the protesters, the future of as many as 5,000 students studying at ICBS was at stake. The students belonged to three faculties of the ICBS which had 18 departments.

The faculties included Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Health and Allied Sciences and School of Architecture and Designing.

The protesters said that as many as 600 students had completed their studies and were waiting for their degrees. They said that at the time of admission, the ICBS had given advertisements in newspapers and claimed that these faculties were recognised by the federal and provincial bodies.

However, according to a spokesman for higher education department, the issue had been taken note of and would be resolved soon.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2017.