ISLAMABAD - To get oneself enrolled in the disciplines of Management Sciences, Computer Sciences and Engineering has turned a distant dream for the aspiring students belonging to a middle class as no public sector university offers courses in these disciplines on regular basis. Despite heavy funding from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to the public sector universities, courses in the said disciplines are being offered on self-financed bases. The Quaid-i-Azam University which is ranked first among the Pakistani universities and second among the universities of Muslim countries offers not even a single seat in the Departments of MBA, Economics and Computer Sciences on regular basis. A limited number of seats on regular basis with normal fee are available in all the departments except MBA, Computer Science and Economics. Only one discipline, M.Sc Gender Studies offers all seats on regular basis as per regional quota. Ten additional seats on self-financed basis are being offered in each discipline except in Pakistan Studies, Psychology and Faculty of Biological Sciences where 15, 20 & 3 seats in each discipline are on self-financed basis respectively. Students pay tuition fee Rs 42,000 per semester for admission to MBA and M.Sc Computer Science and Rs 32,000 for M.Sc and MPA in all disciplines, in addition to other dues and charges. As a top university of the country, it gets extra amount of funds as compared to other universities and the students come from across the country because of regional-based quota system but in terms of fee structure there is no relaxation for the students. Another public sector university, International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI), offers all the courses in Faculty of Management Sciences and Faculty of Engineering & Technology on self-financed basis. In the disciplines of MBA, BBA, Ph.D, MS (Management Sc.), BS, MS and Ph.D in Electronic Engineering, no seat is available on regular basis. The COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) also offers such courses with the same fee structure as prevalent in the private universities. A student from middle class cannot think of studying in the universities like Bahria and Air University, though, they are also public sector universities of which dues are above Rs 60,000 per semester. The point is, what is the purpose of public sector universities and why the grant in billions is distributed to them across the country when a student has to bear the same financial burden, which one bears in private sector universities. It is important to mention here that an amount of Rs 33.7 billion for the HEC has been estimated in the budget of 2008-09, as allocated earlier for the outgoing fiscal year out of which Rs 18,000 millions have been allocated for the development projects and 15,766.425 million for current expenditure of the public sector universities. Dr Riaz Qurashi, Advisor at Quality Assurance & Learning Innovation Division, HEC, told TheNation that the universities earn from three sources, including HEC funding, provincial funding and from their own sources. "The universities about 40 to 70 percent funds acquire from HEC which are mostly for development projects and recurring grants has not been increased for few years. The universities have reservations over the inadequate budget allocation in terms of non-development budget", he added.