Stuck in the middle: Varsity’s lethargy leaves 250 graduate engineers jobless

Students not being registered by accreditation body as department fails to meet standards

KARACHI:

How would you feel if you worked your socks off for four years and at the end of the arduous journey, you were denied that very piece of paper that endorses your achievement? Such is the feeling among the students of the NED University of Engineering and Technology, who, even after completing their graduate studies, have not been granted accreditation for their course.

Umair Jaffery, a graduate of the 2014 batch of NED University cannot find employment anywhere. Similar is the plight of around 250 of his peers who attended the university’s mechanical engineering department from 2011 to 2014.

“The university should take responsibility for what all we have been going through since December,” another student, Syed Nazim Ali Shah, said worriedly. It has been seven months since the students passed out from the varsity and have been trying to find jobs, but every company asks for the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) accreditation certificate that these students have been refused until now. “We are not even eligible to apply for government jobs because they demand the accreditation certificate from the PEC,” he pointed out.

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The dispute started four years ago when the NED changed its annual examination system to semester examinations. After this step, the PEC drafted some policies that every department of the varsity must fulfill. Failure to do so would result in the students’ degrees not being accredited from the PEC head office in Islamabad.

For four years, the mechanical engineering department continued the semester system, in violation of the new rules. When the first badge of the semester examination system completed their course and received their degrees, the PEC refused to register them as engineers.

Meanwhile, the students from all other departments, which had fulfilled the requirements, were able to get registered with the PEC.

Under the new policy, the PEC requires a specific student-teacher ratio in each class, mid-term examination have been made compulsory and no choice is to be given to students in examination papers. “We had more than 70 students in each of the three sections while the PEC required us to have a maximum 40 students in one class,” Jaffery informed. They had also asked the university to increase their faculty, he added.

“I applied for accreditation when I received my degree from the university in February,” said Shah recalling how he came to know about the conflict between the PEC and NED University. Five months on, when he did not receive any confirmation or email from Islamabad, he wrote to the PEC head office and received an email from them. The email stated that all the students from Shah’s batch will be accredited once the university fulfills the PEC requirements. It advised Shah to pursue the matter with the university.

For his part, the mechanical engineering department chairperson, Dr Mubashir Siddiqui, told The Express Tribune that they had taken notice of the issue and advertised vacancies to hire more teachers. “The hiring is in process and we are trying to resolve this problem as soon as possible,” he added. As far as midterm examinations are concerned, the university conducts sessional or class tests which are equivalent to midterm examinations.

The PEC chairperson’s secretary, Mukhtar Ahmed, assured that they will look into the matter and try to accredit the students as soon as the department fulfills the requirements. “The PEC cannot accredit or register any engineer if their institute does not meet our standards,” said PEC Karachi coordinator, Mairaj Zafar.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2015.