‘AIOU giving education to around 1.3 million students’

Islamabad: The Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) is the first distance learning academic institution in South Asia. It is catering to the needs of around 1.3 million students and giving them education at their own place, said AIOU Vice Chancellor Dr. Shahid Siddiqui.
In an exclusive interview with ‘The News,’ Dr Shahid Siddiqui said that universities are for research work that is why AIOU has taken measures to encourage research culture and announced cash prizes for research publications. “Three research journals have been published in six months,” he added.
Talking about revision of curricula and textbooks, Dr. Shahid Siddiqui said that revision of curricula is very important and after joining this university it was his priority to revise the curricula. “A team has been constituted to work over it and initial work has been done,” he added.
Dr Shahid Siddiqui said professional development is very important and for this they have started a series of skill-based lectures, distinguished lectures, book and author series, research colloquium series, awareness and advocacy series and media dialogue series.
He said that the AIOU has unique features as it has largest network of regional services with 44 regional campuses and nearly 1,500 study centres countrywide, including a growing network of video-conferencing, multimedia electronic course centres and well-equipped hostel facilities.
The vice chancellor said that the AIOU has around 1.3 million students and dealing such a large number of students is not an easy task. He said that’s why the AIOU students are facing some issues regarding admissions and getting study material from the university. He said “We are trying our best to solve these issues on urgent basis and for this we have developed call centre and complaint management centre to give quick response over complaints of students from all over the country.”
Dr Shahid Siddiqui said “We are also working to improve our books delivery and mailing system and soon we will adopt a new system, which would take less than one month to deliver books to our students.”Dr. Shahid Siddiqui said “There was frustration among the employees of AIOU when I join the university because they were waiting for selection board for their promotions for many years.
When I took the charge, I promised them for the selection board and right after one month selection board was formed and employees who were waiting for their promotions got it. Within 7 months, two selection boards were constituted and now employees have got their right.”
“We have given promotion to ‘naib qasids’ as well and many employees who were holding master’s degrees were promoted,” he said.He said “We are trying our best to give quality and affordable education to our students and make the image of this university more positive.”