Students protest against HEC's newly introduced Associate Degree programme

• Students staged a protest outside the Sindh Governor House.
• Protestors raised concerns over alleged irregularities in MDCAT conducted under the Pakistan Medical Commission.
• They also demanded that HEC's two-year degree programme should be brought back.

KARACHI: The Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) staged a protest outside the Governor House against the Associate Degree programme recently introduced by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC), The News reported on Tuesday.

The protesters, holding placards and shouting slogans, raised concerns over alleged irregularities in the Medical and Dental Colleges Admissions Test (MDCAT) conducted under the Pakistan Medical Commission.

Addressing the protesters, IJT Karachi Nazim Hafiz Umar Ahmad Khan said the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council should be immediately restored and a re-admission test should be held under it. 

Read more: HEC will not recognise 2-year BA/BSc programmes taken after 2018

He added that the HEC's two-year degree programme should be brought back as thousands of students could not complete the four-year degree programme.

In November, HEC had issued directives to all educational institutions to stop two-year bachelors degree programmes as it will not recognise any such programmes undertaken after the academic year 2018.

Back in 2019, the higher education regulator had announced that they will end the two-year BA/BSc programme replacing them with Associate Degree programmes (AD).

The commission had basically changed the nomenclature for the degree.