National Testing Service under fire

KARACHI – Teachers and students of the Federal Urdu University for Arts, Science and Technology (FUUAST) have strongly criticised the varsity’s decision for hiring NTS (National Testing Service) to carry out admission tests of graduates aspiring for MS and PhD programmes, as NTS administration has started making blunders.
According to complaints of candidates and teachers gathered by The Nation, “Candidates are facing enormous problems in submitting their enrolment forms for an entry test for the said programme as NTS allowed only 9 days to applicants for this purpose, which is not sufficient. These 9 days include four half days and two holidays.”
“NTS restricted the candidates to submit their forms in three banks including UBL, ABL and MCB. However, failure of online banking for the last four days, according to students, kept them away from submitting the forms.”
It is pertinent to mention here that an advertisement for the admission was published on January 29 only in one Urdu newspapers; while the last date for submission of forms was February 7. Before the last date of submission NTS was charging Rs600 but after February 7 Rs1,000 is being charged which is unfair. However, Rs50 out of Rs1,000 is being charged by the FUUAST.
It is worth mentioning that the test will be held on February 22 (today) at Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology during morning hours, while it is expected that 350 to 400 students will be appeared in the test.
A senior teacher at the varsity said that the reliability of the NTS had already been exposed at the Karachi University (KU) as MS and PhD programme had yet to be started due to some serious errors in entrance test conducted by NTS.

Source: The News