Art and artists; neither in the streets, nor at universities

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Faculty of Arts is on the verge of collapse in the country due to nonexistent enrolment at higher secondary school levels and lack of facilities to lure students into discipline.
The public sector universities offering degrees in Arts are in a fix to run their respective departments due to a shortage of funds coupled with the rampant religious outfits operating in the universities who detest art forms such as music, paintings and photography. The nature of the dismal affair of art departments in public sector universities could be gauged from the fact that in many universities, not one faculty member of the arts department has a degree in arts. The administration and deans of the art department are posts which are used to punish natural sciences faculty. Similarly the faculties of humanities and social sciences are endowed with negligible enrollment year after year as students complain of a lack of jobs for graduates in humanities and social sciences. The fact that students are educating themselves not to be literate but to earn paper money is a sad state of affairs as well. Many art and humanities departments resemble a ghost town due to not even a single enrollment.
However, talking to Pakistan Today, Sindh Director General (DG) Colleges and Centralized Admission Policy (CAP) Chairman, Prof Dr Nasir Ansar said that this year CAP granted 770 admissions in humanities group in over 150 colleges and higher secondary schools. He said that the government hired competent teachers for inculcating knowledge to the humanities group but very low enrolment of students resulted in cancelling contracts of a majority of public sector professors and lecturers.
“The government has opened number of departments and courses for students of humanities group in public colleges and higher secondary schools but with the passage of time the enrolment of students in the group has started decreasing, he said, adding that now only few hundred students who could not get admissions in science group enrolled in humanities group. The trend would change with availability of job opportunities. There was a time when every second student wished for enrolment in science group to become doctor or engineer but then the trend changed and enrolment of students in computer science group increased significantly as the demand for it increased in the job market.
Karachi University (KU) Director Admission Prof Dr Khalid Iraqi has also shown reservation over decline in admissions in humanities group at higher secondary school level. He said that the varsity is running 26 departments under faculty of arts but it received as few applications for admission of students with academic background of humanities group. Due to this, the varsity has rationalized its approach and it has started awarding admissions to students having academic background of science to run the faculty. He said that some departments like international relations, sociology and psychology had rationalized their policies and invited students of the science group for admission to run these departments.