Shrinking UoP

As time passes, it is quite common for universities to introduce new departments and courses for their students. However, University of Peshawar is adopting an entirely different approach for the sake of its sustainability as it plans to merge 20 departments with one another. The departments that are about to lose their exclusive status include a mix of both new and traditional programmes, including supply chain management, family studies, history, geology and even statistics.

A large majority of the programmes mentioned often offer no scope with regard to future job prospects or hold no financial merit in the professional world. Some departments have also arguably become redundant. For example, the department of Persian is set to be merged with the department of Urdu, and both will now be taught under one banner.

While it is true that the 'redundancy' of some departments is simply a tragic ode to our rising literacy crisis and our growing dependency on well-paying jobs, it is also true that this reality was inevitable in an increasingly capitalistic society. The loss of specialised studies is huge. No matter how low the turnover is for a certain degree, there is always an aspiring student in some corner of the country who dreams of dedicating their life to a specific subject. These mergers ensure that the student loses their chance to study and eventually contribute to a possibly dying field.

But within the parameters of a prickling reality, keeping these disciplines alive is a fiscal burden with little payoff, or even none at times. This is why the number of students showing up for these departments is slowly diminishing and neither the university nor the students are to blame. It is simply a devastating consequence of capitalism and our loss of the value of education for the sake of education.