Private scholarship

The government of Sindh has announced the Endowment Fund Scholarship 2016-17 for the poor and meritorious students of the province in the disciplines including Business Administration, Information Technology, Medical, Law and Engineering. The government has mainly selected private universities for the scholarship grant. of Pakistan. Students are eligible for the scholarship if the collective income of their household is not more than Rs1,000,000. However, there are some flaws in the eligibility criteria of the scholarship fund which may not help the poor students. First, the institutes mentioned included in the scholarship programme have a high-fees structure. The admission form of these institutes cost in thousands. The middle-class families often don’t seek admission in these universities. Therefore, it is unlikely that students belonging to the poor families will apply for admissions in these institutes.

Second, the ground reality is that the majority of students from the working class families belong to government universities. The government has not listed these universities. The education minister and secretary of education are requested to review the scholarship programme again and provide funds to students belonging to government universities to facilitate students on a large-scale.

Insaf Shaikh

Islamabad