LAHORE - The overall student strength of Government College University Lahore has increased from about 6,200 to more than 11,500 in just three years.
Addressing the inaugural ceremony of a new building of the university’s Examination Branch, Dr Khaleequr Rehman said the university had initiated more than 26 new postgraduate programmes including three doctoral programmes since July 2011, which was unprecedented.
He added that the administration was also concentrating on the infrastructural development of the university, so that adequate facilities could be provided to students and faculty members. He said that they were also establishing model reading rooms in all the departments of College University Lahore. “In last three years, we have added more than 24 new modern class rooms and offices, besides refurnishing and upgrading existing infrastructure of GCU,” Prof Rehman highlighted.
He said that the new building would fulfill the needs of College University 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.
The VC said that he had increased number of seats for the students on open merit in all the academic programmes, but still facing extreme pressure of admissions. He said that more than 5,000 applications were received against a few hundred seats of BS (Computer Sciences) and same went for all other programmes.
Prof Rahman said that despite the increase in seats, this year, the students even having up to 92 per cent marks failed to secure admission in pre-engineering and pre-medical at GCU. The Vice Chancellor said that 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 that the building had been in a highly dilapidated condition since long and had required extensive repair and restoration work.