AIOU achieves distinction, having largest academic network

Islamabad
Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) has achieved a singular distinction, having largest academic and infrastructure network in the country, with 44-campuses and thousands of tutorial centres.
The university with annual 1.3 million students and twelve hundreds courses has emerged as a mega university in the Asian region, this was stated by the Minister of State for Education and Professional training, Muhammad Engineer Baligh-ur-Rehman, at the inauguration of AIOU new campus at Bahawalpur.
He noted that the AIOU has a leading role in improving literacy rate, particularly providing education to the female students that are 58 percent of total enrolment.
AIOU is the only University in the country which is providing quality education from
Matric to Ph.D level to the people of all ages at their door-steps.
While congratulating the Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr. Shahid Siddiqui for achieving a milestone in the education sector, he hoped they will lay greater focus on research-based and technical education. He underlined the need of promoting applied and relevant research which helps to resolves socio-economic problems of the country.
The Minister further noted that the AIOU made a big achievement in making the distance learning education system successful and introducing online academic courses. He appreciated the AIOU for establishing a most-modern campus in Bahawalpur. He emphasised that this campus should serve as a model for the rest of the country.
The AIOU, he added should also exploit its capacity and potential for providing support to other educational institutions in addressing the challenges in the education sector and facilitating the students across the board.
The minister said that the Government was aggressively following a strict merit policy to bring about capable people at the helm of affair. The appointment of Dr. Shahid Siddiqui was in line with the same criteria.
The Minister also highlighted the achievements made at the higher education level by the Federal and Provincial governments, adding a record budget was allocated for the promoting of higher and research-based education in the country.
The inauguration ceremony of Bahawalpur campus was also addressed by the Vice-Chancellor who reiterated his commitment to further strengthen their efforts to meet the educational need of the people with best possible facilities. It was their pride that AIOU had been playing a major role in improving literacy rate in the country. He thanked the Minister for his all-out support for turning their mission ‘Education for all’ into reality.
The inauguration ceremony was addressed among other by Dr. Rashid A Naeem, Director Regional Services and Khawaja Sabir Hussain, regional director Bahawalpur. The ceremony was largely attended including local MNAs/MPs.