KARACHI:Sindh High Court Chief Justice Ahmed Ali M. Shaikh has said that establishment of Shaheed Zukfikar Ali Bhutto University of Law (SZABUL) reflects enlightenment of a proud nation and commitment of the government to promote and expand the facilities for higher education in the province.
He was delivering presidential address at the seminar on Collaborative Program of SZABUL with the University of Northampton (UoN) at a local hotel on Sunday. Vice Chancellor UoN Prof Nick Petford, Dean Partnerships UoN Professor Hastings Mackenzie, founding VC SZABUL Justice (retd) Qazi Khalid Ali and Registrar SZABUL Syed Sharaf Ali Shah also spoke on the occasion.
Justice Ali said SZABUL was need of the hour and it was matter of great satisfaction that this first law university of the country had been imparting quality legal education to the students of Sindh for the last five years. “Today I am happy to see that in a very short time the SZABUL University of Law has achieved beyond its defined goals and it would not have been possible to provide legal education at par with International standards without the untiring and continuous efforts of its founding Vice Chancellor Justice (retd) Qazi Khalid Ali who worked untiringly for establishment of this prestigious institution”, he added.
The CJ SHC expressed satisfaction that the SZABUL has been able to enter collaboration agreements with International Academia, especially with University of Northampton-UK for imparting internationally recognized degree program at very affordable cost.
Vice Chancellor UoN, while elaborating the Collaborative Program said that while planning collaboration in the field of higher education both the partners had needs of 21st century in mind. Pakistan Shared common law with the UK and its students would benefit greatly from the collaborative program. He said that UoN was one of the three oldest and most prestigious universities of the UK. “Our government ranks universities into three categories, Gold, Silver and Bronze and UoN ranked in Gold Category”, he added.
Founding Vice Chancellor SZABUL, Justice (retd) Qazi Khalid Ali thanked the VC and the Dean of UoN for extending support to the Collaborative Program. He said with a common vision, both UoN and the SZABUL had moved ahead towards developing a unique blend of educational opportunities for Pakistani students in professional discipline of law. With this strong foundation, students of the law university would achieve much success in their chosen profession. He said HE and his team were proud of these collaborative arrangements and of the level of cooperation that existed between UoN and the SZABUL. “We are committed to develop high-quality partnership with like-minded universities and organization so that, through mutual benefit and respect we share our ambitions to make a difference in the world,” Qazi Khalid added.
Qazi Khalid said The SZABUL- UoN Collaboration was the first and the only foreign study programme wherein the curricula of both the universities were brought in consonance with each other through the process of Articulation and Mapping. He said Pakistani students studying in UoN and British students studying in SZABUL would be brought the same syllabus. Pakistani students would complete one year of their course in UK and rest of their course in Pakistan and get degree of UoN. The partnership would provide opportunities to the SZABUL students to study abroad and to the SZABUL itself to welcome International students to its classes.” The research-partnerships will enable us to bring researchers together to resolve some of the world’s smost challenging problems. Our federal and Provincial governments, EC, HECP and Partners’ network will help, support and promote the students and academic colleagues”. He said, adding that he had high hopes that the program would not only raise the standard of the higher education in the but would also produce good lawyers, good constitutional experts, good judges, good bureaucrats and good law teachers.