By IPS Correspondents
ISLAMABAD, Aug 19 2003 (IPS)

Ali Haider is into the third semester of a bachelor of computer science degree course and is enthusiastic about his subject. The 22-year-old however wishes his teachers would answer the questions he has a little sooner – it is usually a day before he gets a reply.

That is because Haider’s ‘campus’ is his computer monitor, and his link to his teachers and classmates is electronic. He is one of the 2,200 students enrolled with the government’s Virtual University, which operates 190 virtual campuses in 60 cities in Pakistan.

His teachers, said Haider, are highly qualified and although the delay in student-teacher interaction takes some getting used to, he is satisfied. ”It is more of an issue of adapting to a virtual study environment,” the young man, who lives in the southern port city of Karachi, told IPS in an email interview.

For the planners and administrators of Pakistan’s Virtual University (VU), it has also been an issue of using communication technologies innovatively to push education opportunities out to the people.

”The idea was to enable people all over the country to access education of the highest standard, and internationally recognised, without their having to relocate,” said Naveed Malik, rector of the university, which is headquartered in Lahore.

The cost of quality higher education in Pakistan was a major concern for the planners, and when the Virtual University was launched in March 2002, the keyword was ‘affordable’.

”A student pays about a tenth of conventional tuition fees,” explained Malik, ”which allows poor but talented people to take advantage of the programme.” A four-year degree programme at VU – the first such offered by a government-run university – costs students 68,000 rupees (about 1,178 U.S. dollars).

At the end of those four years and provided they have the grades, Pakistani students then have the option of enrolling in master’s degree courses in universities abroad. This is proving to be attractive to bright young Pakistanis.

With the exception of medical and engineering universities, all other universities and colleges in the country offer two-year bachelor’s degree programmes that are not recognised by western universities.

But graduates from these institutions do not always meet the expectations from the job market.

”There are far too many information technology (IT) schools that churn out graduates, but only a few have the ability to compete in a job market that is governed by cut-throat competition,” said an official of the Higher Education Commission.

The commission evaluates private sector educational institutes to decide whether their degrees can be granted official recognition.

The official’s view is spot on. Pakistan’s expanding IT sector has led to a mushrooming of private degree factories that charge exorbitant fees but whose courses are seldom recognised by the government.

Furthermore, these institutions are inevitably to be found in Pakistan’s cities, widening the rural-urban gap in access to education in a country whose 145 million population has a literacy rate of under 45 percent.

Hence the need for and appeal of the Virtual University, which was conceived by Pakistan’s Ministry for Science and Technology and has a budget of 16 million dollars for four years. Initially, the VU too offered a bachelor’s degree in IT-related subjects in view of the growing need for qualified IT professionals.

Now there is a range of subjects to choose from. On offer are four-year degree programmes in business administration, public administration, accounting, finance, commerce, economics, education, law, mass communications, political science, sociology and statistics.

VU planners are buoyed by one vital statistic – the dropout rate which Shafaat Bokhari, administrative head of the university, said is less than 30 percent. ”The ratio is 35 to 40 percent in other institutes,” he told IPS.

They are also looking forward to the availability of two educational channels on Pakistan television, which are scheduled to begin around end-October, as Dr Attaur Rehman, minister of science and technology, has promised. That will allow distance learning programmes to be broadcast, which is precisely what the VU wants to be able to do.

Using communications technologies as the backbone of an educational programme that is just over a year old has not been plain sailing.

”In the first semester we faced a little difficulty because we were used to interactive study settings in which teachers were there to answer our questions and solve our problems,” said Zubair Ahmad, who responded on behalf of his class at Etech College, a VU Virtual Campus in the city of Gujrat in the province of Punjab.

Ahmed said he posts his questions to a moderated online discussion board, from where his teachers pick it up and answer. ”Other than that,” said Ahmed, ”our experience with the university is very good and the system is working very well.”

The reliance on the Internet and telecom networks has however thrown up glitches at awkward moments.

Some students have had problems answering examination papers online. ”Data loss seems to be a problem,” complained Imtiaz Ali Shah, a computer science student based in Islamabad. ”We save an answer but the data field turns out to be blank and we lose marks.”

Officials at VU acknowledge the problems and say they are working on improving the system. While they tackle temperamental exam papers that are on-line, the university management hopes its new courses will boost the number of enrolled students to 5,000.

”We hope to achieve the target, but we also understand that there needs to be more awareness among people about the virtual studying environment,” Bokhari pointed out. ”We are using the press and admission advertisements to attract more students.”

The most valuable promotion for Pakistan’s Virtual University however comes from its students. Despite the difficulties, they have little but praise for it. ”It is a very exciting experience,” enthused Shahid Aziz, a computer science student. ”I find we have a better educational experience here than in most conventional institutions.”

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