ISLAMABAD – Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) has announced to grantscholarship to the students who obtain 75% marks in the educationalprogrammes of every level.
Indeed this will encourage the students to pay more attention to theireducational activities and get higher marks in order to become eligible forthe scholarship.
Undoubtedly, over the years the AIOU has played a very important role inpromotion of education from SSC to the higher level. Because of its vastoutreach programme that has expanded even to other countries such as the USand the UK, it is regarded as the world’s fourth largest institution ofhigher learning with annual enrolment reaching millions every year. Itsdistant learning system has especially provided an opportunity to theyouth, especially women of far flung areas, to pursue their education andbecome productive citizens of the country by contributing to its welfareand development.
After the arrival of Professor Dr Shahid Siddiqui as its Vice Chairman, theAIOU has witnessed not only expansion in its programmes but also engagingin a series of productive activities such as holding seminars and workshopsin order to prepare the youth in accordance with the modern dayrequirements.
It is good to see the University following the Chinese model to promotestudents’ entrepreneurship so as to enable the youth to create earningopportunities through creativity and innovation. Indeed this is the coursethat our institutions of higher learning need to adopt for creation ofknowledge and products and for this to happen it is important thatinstitutions lay special focus on genuine research.
While the AIOU has announced scholarships for students of all levels, weexpect that special incentives will also be offered to the students ofdoctorate degrees so that quality research, free of plagiarism, could becarried out.
Instead of focusing on producing bumper crop of research articles, the goalshould be to foster academic institutions and a culture that valuesscholarly achievement and the virtues of honesty, rigour, correctness,originality and cooperation.