Daily Times

All over the world, amid this pandemic, nearly every government prioritised its students and their concerns by arranging online classes and exams and even celebrated the hearty moments of graduation with them. This shows that despite all other failures, they were successful in securing the future of this blooming segment of society. Alas! students of Pakistan were not that lucky.

Apart from the miseries faced due to lack of internet access, which was needed for online classes, another hassle dragon rose to further discourage their already demoralised souls: online exams. The hopelessness faced by students who were supposed to graduate this May is ungauged. In the beginning, the HEC’s proactive approach towards this issue was commendable but later, its unconcerned role and failure to check on universities to ensure that they acted on HEC’s guidelines is a complete show of miserable functioning.

As universities were supposed to announce their policies on exams within one week of the meeting of the HEC chairman with the universities’ vice-chancellors, which occurred on May 12, 2020. As per HEC’s direction to universities, several options and a combination of options, which had been applied in different scenarios and proven successful all over the world, were shared for consideration. Unsurprisingly, almost none of the universities followed the given timeline Still, some were quicker than the others and formulated policies as soon as possible. While among these, there are still some universities that haven’t yet submitted any concrete plan and Pakistan’s biggest university, Punjab University, and Engineering University are one of them. It’s been more than a month and no one has dared awaken these universities from tortoise sleep. Even HEC’s inaction over this lethargy is pushing this system of education to another level of disparity because most foreign scholarships demand students to have completed their degrees by the month of July. If a situation like this prevails, only those students will be entertained, whose universities have adopted an early policy. Regrettably, this case won’t rest on scholarships only but also jobs although after seeing Pakistan’s economy and employment rate, these students are not expecting much. Still, from whatever is left, companies and firms will hire those only who are done with their degrees on time.

If you cannot take online exams; if you cannot take traditional exams and if you cannot take assignments instead of exams, what else is left!

By not giving timely degrees to these woefully students would mean allowing other students to thrive on their miseries and an absolute end of competition from the market. That’s why it is reasonable to ask here when HEC had made it clear that the purpose of this speedy policy development was to secure the future of these graduates, why are universities delaying exams. Now, these universities are making lame excuses that many students are hindering the progress in the pertaining matter by raising the internet facility issue. They must know that this sceptical blame game won’t work this time because in the May 12 meeting of the HEC, this issue was already raised and it was emphasised that students’ problems shall be heard and considered first and universities were allowed to take into account different combination of options for satisfying all the student’s concerns related to it. Notwithstanding HEC’s assumption of appellate body’ role for dealing with the complaints of students regarding the university’s policy and format, its apathy on these complaints shows it doesn’t want to further get involved in this issue and let the universities do whatever they want to do with their students. On the similar footing, although the HEC should have asked strictly for the progress report and heard both the Universities’ and students’ concerns, here too, the institution failed badly to recognise the gravity of the matter on time. Earlier it seemed like the traditional method will be the only option left to deal with the matter in hand but as per the HEC’s prediction, Universities won’t be opened till the 15th of July, which shows that these institutions will further drag this show to one more month, but now, in present, it is crystal clear they will trawl final year students even beyond the predicted date as according to new directions that have been released on 30th Jun, these students are shovel in the second category of the priority list for attending the University. It means even traditional exams are thrown for an undetermined period because the first slot to attend the university will be students having issues related to online classes and exams.

According to HEC, no exam policy was never on the list of considered options, what are these options? Students deserve an answer because if you cannot take online exams; if you cannot take traditional exams and if you cannot take assignments instead of exams, what else is left in your given options. Although assignments or promoting students without exams could have been a better option because in the country like Pakistan, where availability of the internet is already meagre as according to annual Economist intelligence unit, Pakistan was placed 76th out of 100 countries in terms of affordability, availability and people’s ability to use the internet and ranked 24th out of 26 South Asian countries.

According to this same survey, this decline is observed due to downtrodden economies of the improvised country. Still under such bleak set of circumstances University’s adamant desire to consider online exams option is openly ridiculous and their unwillingness to give a thought to other options dragging this charade further because asking the students to take traditional exams whenever universities will open is no solution at all. However, from the whole scenario, we can call out that no final policy is the policy adopted by HEC and Universities to waste a little more time of these hopeless students.

The writers is a student at Punjab University law college and a human rights activist. She has already written for Daily Times Pakistan; Courting the Law and Pakistan Observer on national and international matters about law and politics. She tweets @Rabiawali11.