Damned if we do, damned if we don’t

Freshmen at the University of Karachi (KU) have been facing problems due to unavailability of compulsory subject teachers, it is reliably learnt.
Almost a month had passed since the KU started the new academic year, but there were some departments where not a single class of compulsory subjects had taken place so far. The old students, who had passed their first year, were aware of this habitual practice but the new comers were fading out at the start of their higher education journey.
On the other hand, the varsity management was trying to replace the fixed compulsory subjects with those subjects for which teachers were available. With this, the varsity management had also changed the time-table, which was causing a lot of inconvenience for students at the beginning of their higher education journey.
One month had passed since we started visiting the varsity to attend classes, but not a single class of compulsory subjects had taken place since the university reopened, said Fatima, a student of the Department of General History. “In orientation class, the chairperson of the department in her address told us that we will study English as a compulsory subject in the first semester, but not a single class of English has taken place during the one month time that has elapsed,” she added.
We regularly visited the office of our department to find out whether a class would be held on that day or not, but they would always tell us to stay in the classroom and wait for a teacher, she said, adding that we had chosen our two optional subjects as per time table announced by the department and later we were informed that English was replaced with Pakistan Study and the class of compulsory subject would take place at 2:20pm.”
“Earlier, the time of compulsory subject was 12:10pm and we chose optional subjects per time table but now we have to change our optional subjects with a change in time of compulsory subject classes,” she maintained.
Another student Hira, studying in the Department of Economics, narrated the same story as the other students of the varsity. The department has announced that Pakistan Study would be our compulsory subject instead of English, she said, while adding mockingly that the students were now waiting for the moment when Pakistan Study would be replaced with another compulsory subject.
An official of the Faculty of Arts dean office said that there was shortage of compulsory subject teachers in the varsity, due to which compulsory subjects in some departments were replaced with others keeping the availability of teachers in mind. The new comers were supposed to study Pakistan Studies in the second semester but now in some departments were teachers for English language courses could not be arranged, would study English in the second semester. However, Faculty of Arts Dean Prof Dr Zaffar Iqbal when approached for comments, refused to talk on the issue due to some personal engagements.