Dr Shahid Siddiqui
Dr Shahid Siddiqui took over as the vice-chancellor of the Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) in October last year. His ambitions about the university are not hollow promises, as in a short period of time Siddiqui has brought many positive changes to the institution.
The new vice-chancellor has transformed the university and its regional campuses.
To improve the functioning and performance of the institution’s many regional centres, the vice-chancellor holds regular meetings via Skype.
The initiative also saves time and keeps the top management of the university in constant touch with officials working at the regional centres.
While sharing updates on the various new initiatives taken to transform the institution, he said lectures were regularly being organised on diverse topics covering various disciplines under both social as well as natural sciences.
The AIOU was established in 1974 and aimed to provide promising students who lived in rural or inaccessible areas the opportunity to gain tertiary education at low cost without having to leave their native home.
In a conservative society where many families are reluctant to send their daughters for tertiary education, AIOU has provided a high number of women in the country with the opportunity to pursue higher education.
The university has a total enrollment of around 500,000 in its bachelors, masters and PhD programmes, and has an annual intake of close to 100,000 students.
Prior to Siddiqui’s arrival, the varsity was a simmering pot of politics, sit-ins and inter-departmental rivalries. The students were the bearing the brunt of the situation however, the picture has now changed altogether.
“The prime purpose of any varsity is research and that is my focus,” the vice-chancellor remarked, adding that they have finalised plans to publish three special research journals by the end of this year to disseminate research findings in various disciplines.
Two research journals on social sciences and education have already started publishing, while the three proposed new journals will relate focus on science and technology, research on Urdu language and business management.
The varsity also plans to enter into a contract with a telecom company so that it can send information such as submission of fee, admission outcomes, dispatch of books etc through text messages.
“This year, about 30 per cent of the university students received text messages about their admissions, while the rest were sent letters,” the vice-chancellor said.
Siddiqui said they were changing the traditional mechanism to dispatch books to the students and now a bar-coded pack would be sent.
For the first time in the history of the varsity, peons and lower staff having masters and equivalent degrees have been promoted as lower division clerks.
“I did not want them to stay there for the rest of their lives with that qualification,” the vice-chancellor said.
He said that revision of curricula had been initiated and drafts and proposals in this regard were being finalised.
Siddiqui also said that a file-tracking system would be launched to follow the age of a particular issue.
“A file will not stay in a certain office beyond a specific time,” he said.
He added that they planned to collaborate with a few banks to establish online counters for students that would make the process of submission of fee easier.
A call centre service operating 18-hour a day has also been launched to assist university students.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 28th, 2015.
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