By Muhammad Omar Iftikhar
One of the pillars assuring success to an individual and a nation is education. Enough stress has been given to the children and the youth to gain an education. Unfortunately, the state of affairs in Pakistan needs to be addressed at the earliest. Even in today’s age, education is not easily available to the children who belong from the lower-middle or lower classes of the population.
Parents belonging to the middle class do their best to send their children to private schools and colleges of repute. However, this luxury is not available for all. Indeed, education has become a luxury that must be a necessity and available for all. While the state of affairs of education in cities and especially in the metropolis is not that bleak, the situation in villages and remote areas shows a distressing picture.
Children living in villages have no access to proper education. Even if they can study in schools, they do not have proper colleges. They need to relocate themselves to the nearest city to get admission to a university. That too is a rarity as such students, because of their financial shortcomings, cannot pursue higher education in private universities that charge hefty fees. The concerned authorities in the Ministry of Education must allocate some budget that allows children from the underprivileged sector to complete their primary education.
They can at least complete their graduation to earn a job. Once they are employed, they can fund their higher education themselves. Furthermore, the Ministry can have some model to facilitate portions of their higher education. Indeed this process would strictly be on merit or need-based model with proper scrutiny and research conducted before providing the students with some form of financial assistance. It must be easier if students from the underprivileged sector can gain access to education in state-owned educational institutions and complete their studies to add value to the country’s economy.
