LAHORE: (Sunday, March 19, 2017) Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) has condemned the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan for writing a letter to the universities to stop 2-year BA/BSc and MA/MSc degree programmes from 2018 and 2020 consecutively.

In a joint statement FAPUASA Central President Dr. Hamayoun Khan, Central General Secretary Dr. Mahboob Hussain and Presidents of Punjab, KPK, Sindh, Balochistan and Islamabad chapters have said the decision would affect thousands of regular students as well as private students.

They said keeping view the ground realities some departments, especially social sciences disciplines, have reverted back to annual system from the semester system. Under such circumstance the recent decision of the HEC would affect social sciences and other disciplines negatively.

They said the FAPUASA – one of the main stakeholders was not consulted on this important issue of national level significance. “It is not possible for a large number of deserving students to take admission in 4-year degree programmes and study consecutively. The HEC has had a bad experience of MPhil leading to PhD Programme, wherein majority of the student couldn’t plan study for long years and they demanded their quit after MPhil. This aspect must be kept in mind and shouldn’t be ignored.”

The FAPUASA has demanded the HEC to withdraw this letter and call for a meeting of the stakeholders to think afresh because it would not be practical to implement this plan from 2018 and 2020.