LAHOR E: As most public universities are observing summer vacation from coming Monday, the private varsities will remain open either for regular classes or special summer programmes.

Some private varsities` faculty have asked the federal and provincial higher education commission to form a uniform policy for both public and private universities with regard to academic year, including vacation.

`Many private universities in the province hardly give summer vacation to students and teachers. They either run regular or special programmes during the two and a half months (June to mid-August) while the public sector varsities are closed for the period,` a senior faculty member of a private university in Lahore told Dawn.

He criticised the federal and provincial HEC for not coming up with a uniform policy in this regard. `The faculty and students of private universities also need summer vacation. It is their prerogative too,` he argued.

Punjab HEC Chairman Dr Muhammad Nizamuddin said the private varsities were autonomous to have their own academic year for different programmes.

`It is up to the private varsities to have less or more summer holidays according to their academic need. We do not dictate them rather let them go ahead with their schedule, he said and added that students were, however, entitled to summer vacation. Last week, the matter of fee differential in both private and public sector varsities was discussed in the Punjab Assembly. An opposition member requested the government to take some measures to check exorbitant fee structure of some universities.

PU: The Punjab University Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology on Thursday organised a national symposium on personalised medicine, detection, diagnosis and treatment.

PU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Zaffar Mueen Nasir, Acting Director IBB ProfDr Javed Iqbal Qazi, Incharge IBB Dr Mahjabeen Saleem, resource person Dr Johar Ali, Dr Asma Manzoor, faculty members and a large number of students were present on the occasion.

Addressing the inaugural session, Dr Nasir said the only difference between human beings and animals was knowledge otherwise similarity between genetic map of human beings and animals was about 95 per cent.

Dr Johar All discussed genome sequencing, biotechnology data generation, data interpretation, data analysis and data mining. He said bio-technologists should come forward in various fields in which scientists were advancingin the modern world.

UVAS: The Quality Enhancement Cell of the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS), Lahore, organised a workshop on optimaluse of Turnitin by supervisors here on Thursday.

Speaking on the occasion, Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Talat Naseer Pasha said: `The role of QEC is highly important in universities especially in terms of improving the quality of education, teaching, maintaining decorum and management in the lecture rooms.

He emphasised the vigilance required of the academic supervisors regarding scrutiny of the postgraduate thesis for plagiarism.