Infrastructure development: GCU students’ strength increases by 85% in 3 years

A new building for the Examination Department was inaugurated.

LAHORE:

Government College University’s student body has swelled from 6,200 students three years ago to more than 11,500 this year, Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Muhammad Khaleequr Rahman said on Friday.

He was addressing the inauguration ceremony of a two-storey building for the university’s examination branch. The new building has state-of-the-art examination rooms, offices, class rooms and seminar rooms.

The vice chancellor said the university had initiated more than 26 new postgraduate programmes including three doctoral programmes since July 2011. He said they were also concentrating on developing the university’s infrastructure and providing adequate facilities to students and faculty. He said they were also establishing reading rooms in all departments of GCU for students.

Rahman said more than 24 new class rooms and offices had been added to the GCU’s building in the last three years.

He said the Examination Department building was the first structure constructed using GCU’s own financial resources instead of government grants. He said the building would suffice for 10 years. He said two more storeys could be added to the building.

The vice chancellor said he had increased the number of students’ seats on open merit in all academic programmes. He said they had received more than 5,000 applications for a few hundred seats in the BS (Computer Sciences) programme. Rahman said despite the increase in seats this year, students who had up to 92 per cent marks in their matriculation had failed to secure admission in the pre-engineering and pre-medical programmes at GCU.

The vice chancellor said the university was also restoring its 145-year-old main building.  He said the clock tower building was being restored along the lines of its original design in 1870. He said the building had been in a state of disrepair for very long and required extensive repair and restoration work.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 30^th, 2014.