Govt colleges lower admission criteria

Under the zonal system policy, many students with lower grades were admitted into prestigious institutions

KARACHI:

The College Education Department Sindh has reduced the merit criteria for first year admissions at well-known government colleges, which were once considered the academic icons of the public education system in Karachi. This development came to the fore after the release of three different merit/placement lists by the College Education Department one after another.

It should be noted that this is the first time in the 25-year history of the Central Admission Committee that the merit list of the colleges has been released not once but thrice and each time the merit has been lowered compared to the previous list. Reportedly, the merit of several well-known government colleges has dropped by 40 to 90 marks in different faculties compared to last year.

"Our college was once known for offering admission only to students with grades above A-1. However, now the situation is somewhat different. This time different A=grade students have been admitted. The teachers are assessing their performance. The real issue will come to the fore once results for the exams are released," said the principal of a well-known government college.

When the Express Tribune inquired about the declining merit criteria at leading government colleges from Dr Muhammad Ali Sheikh, the first official to hold the post of Director General Colleges in Sindh, he expressed his disapproval at the new policy.

"Reducing the merit criteria demoralizes eligible students since they enroll in a top ranking college thinking that they have secured admission in a top level institution, but when the intellectual level of other students is not the same, they are disappointed," opined Dr Sheikh, who believed that the previous policy should not be changed since his administration had followed it without violation from 2006 to 2008.

In this regard, according to the details received by the Express Tribune from the renowned Adamji Science College, in the third placement list this year, the pre-medical merit closed at 435, while engineering closed at 465 and computer science at 463. Last year in 2023, the merit of the same college was closed at 497 in pre-medical, 485 in pre-engineering and 496 in computer science. Thus, the merit of the three faculties was reduced by 62 marks, 20 marks and 33 marks respectively. Similarly, the pre-medical merit at the DJ Science College was reduced from 476 in 2023 to 415 in 2024, while the merit for pre-engineering dropped from 456 to 448 and the merit for computer science changed from 480 to 430 during the past one year.

Likewise, in the Government Delhi College, the pre-medical merit was reduced from 471 to 385, pre-engineering from 450 to 410, and computer science from 488 to 390. While at the Government College for Boys Nazimabad the pre-medical merit was reduced from 467 in 2023 to 390, the pre-engineering merit changed from 439 to 408, while the computer sciences merit dropped from 475 to 400. Similarly, among female students, the merit of the P.E.C.H.S (Pakistan Employees Cooperative Housing Society) Girls College dropped from 497 to 471 for pre-medical, from 487 to 462 for pre-engineering, and from 484 to 440 for computer sciences.

Talking on the matter, Director General Colleges Sindh, Dr Naveed Rab, confirmed that the merit of most renowned colleges was low this time. "This time under the zonal system in the central admission policy, students with better grades got admission in their own zones, after which 70 per cent seats were vacant in most colleges. Therefore, the second and third placement lists were released, in which students with relatively lower grades also entered these colleges.