The differences in the educational standards and practices in the public and private sector universities in Pakistan.

The universities in Pakistan are operating in both public as well as private sector. However there are many differences in the policies and practices of the universities in two sectors. The advances in curriculum ,the recognition of universities and the funds availabe are the main determinants of the differnces in educational standards in public and private sector universities in Pakistan.The public universities are managed by government appointed officials and the government is responsible to fund them. Whereas the private universities are operated by entrepreneurs with the aim of providing better education, which only few are able to fulfill. Now-a-days, the public universities are making attempts to make their curriculum more useful to the students. They are trying to pay more attention towards the realistic demonstration and illustration of the knowledge imparted to students enrolled. A good example of this is evident in the projects of the students of the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore depicts the practical implementation of their technical knowledge. Recently, a five member team of UET students called PakTech qualified to the worldwide finals of Microsoft Imagine 2011 by making an economical Touch Surface. However, this doesnot happens in all the public universities. The curriculum followed is not regularly revised in some of the government driven institutions. Because of this reason, some of the public universities are not preferred. On the other side, the curriculum followed by most of the private universities have some imperfections like that in public universities. The private universities portrays that their curriculum offers better in depth study of the concerned discipline, but only few private universities have actually developed their curriculum in a way to give a better in sight of the concerned discipline. The examples of few include Lahore University Of Management Sciences and Agha Khan Medical University. The other universities are unable to provide any substantiate material in their curiculum which could actually bring a significant change in the learnig of students.This means that in both Public and Private sector there are only few universities which provide quality education to their students. The high standard of education provided could only be beneficial for the students if the certificates of the degree awarded to students are recognized in the country. No matter what is the curriculum criteria of the public universities,at least, the certificates issued by them are acknowledged. On the other hand most of the private universities have not gained recognition from the concerned boards of higher education.This includes many private medical universities and other small scale universities opened at various places across all the cities but their degrees are not recognized by the Higher Education Comission.As a result their alumni face difficulties in finding employment in established firms and departments. Recently, a news article reported that the students of the Bannu Medical College (BMC) protested in the fedral capital to gain recognition of their medical college by Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). They feared that without recognition of their degrees by University of Health Sciences they would be denied even house jobs in reputable hospitals. A student said, “We took entrance tests like other students in Khyber Medical College and Ayub Medical College yet our future is uncertain.” However, there are certain exceptions to this as well. Most public universities in pakistan are facing the problem of the lack of funds available to them. As a result, they are not able to hire highly qualified professionals who could bring in more innovations to the current syllabus. The insufficent economic resources make it difficult for the public universities to maintain high standard of education. The lack of funds is due to the less tution fee in the public institutes and the misallocation of the resources in annual budget. Public universities across Sindh including Karachi University, NED University of Engineering and Technology and Federal Urdu University of Arts suspended classes due to the budget deficit of Higher Education Commission . On the other hand most of the private universities although claiming to be non-profit organizations are earning huge profits by running them.This is because they have tranformed from educational to commercial hubs. They are taking large sums of money as tution fees in comparison with public universities but there is little which they are doing to improve the curriculum or to gain recognition.The problem of limited funds available is worsened by the mismanagement of available resources which is mainly due to corruption. The educational standards and practices of the public university differs from that of the private universities in many respects. With the exception of some big names like UET, LUMS etc, other private as well as public universities are often negligent towards improving the curriculum.The public universities are recognized whereas many private universities have not gained the recognition yet. The public universities have to stuggle hard with their budget than does the private universities whose administration dosenot have to depend on others for any decision. Therefore, there are many differences in the practices of the public and private sector universities and different reasons are responsible for these discrepancies.