Everyone wants to be Ravian:Vice Chancellor GCU

Lahore: The overall student strength of Government College University, Lahore has increased from about 6,200 to more than 11,500 in a short span of just three years, said Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Muhammad Khaleeq-ur-Rahman while addressing the inauguration of two-storey new building of the university’s Examination Branch which comprised of state-of-the-art examination rooms, offices, class rooms and seminar rooms.

Speaking on the occasion, the Vice Chancellor said the university had initiated more than 26 new postgraduate programmes including three doctoral programmes since July 2011, which was unprecedented, adding that they were also concentrating on the infrastructural development of the university, so that adequate facilities were provided to students and faculty members. He said that they were also establishing model reading rooms in all departments of GCU for students.

Prof Rahman highlighted that in last three years, he had added more than 24 new modern class rooms and offices, besides refurnishing and upgrading existing infrastructure of GCU.  He said that the new building would fulfil the needs of GCU Examination Department for the next ten decades. He also said that it was the first building, which was constructed by GCU from its own resources instead of the government grant. He said that the foundation of building was made strong enough to build another two storeys.

The Vice Chancellor said he had increased number of student seats on open merit in all academic programmes but still they were facing extreme pressure of admissions. He said they received more than 5,000 applications for a couple of hundred seats of BS (Computer Sciences) and same was the situation for their all academic programmes.

Prof Rahman said that despite the increase in seats, this year students, having up to 92 per cent marks, failed to secure admission in pre-engineering and pre-medical at GCU.

The Vice Chancellor said the university was also restoring its 145-year-old main building.  He said that changes, happened against the original design, were being undone and the clock tower building was being restored to its original condition of 1870s. He said the building had been in a highly dilapidated condition since long and had required extensive repair and restoration work.