The major purpose of the study was to examine the role of private sector in higher education in Pakistan by adopting descriptive method of research. The main objectives of the study were to compare the views of administrators, teachers and students about the quality of various aspects of higher education, to compare the views of administrators both male and female, permanent and contract based, about the quality of various aspects of higher education, to compare the views of male teachers and female teachers, permanent, contract based and visiting teaching faculty, about the quality of various aspects of higher education, to compare the views of male students and female students about the quality of various aspects of higher education, to determine the share of private sector of higher education in the term of students’ enrolment and teaching faculty and to suggest measures for improvement of private sector universities in Pakistan. As the study was conducted at national level, the population of the study constituted 270 administrators, 6180 teachers and 61108 students in existing 54 private universities and degree awarding institutions of Pakistan. Method of cluster sampling was used to select the study sample of 840 people, which was carried out in two stages. At the first stage, 12 clusters of universities were randomly chosen out of the total population of the private universities. At the second stage, 60 administrators, 180 teachers and 600 students were selected through random sampling procedure with five administrators, 15 teachers and 50 students from each selected cluster. Three questionnaires (one each for administrators, teachers and students), developed and refined through pre-testing, were used as measuring instruments to collect data. The researcher personally visited each university and collected data from the sample. The collected data was tabulated and interpreted by using t-test and ANOVA. It was concluded that the role played by private sector in higher education was of considerable value. All respondents were found to have positive opinion about the availability of internet facilities, encouragement of teachers for students class participation, teachers’ ability to create conducive class environment for learning and wholesome attitude of teachers toward their students. Nevertheless, they expressed slightly negative opinion about the appropriateness of instructional facilities, sufficiency of books/periodicals available in the library, professional training of teachers, teachers’ command over the subject matter, teachers’ encouragement in promoting critical and creative thinking among students, relevance of the subjects and the content to present and future needs of society and quality of research. All respondents exhibited fairly negative opinion about selection of students during admission on the basis of their merit and motivation and competitiveness of the private sector graduates with public sector universities. Male respondents exhibited more positive views about the quality of various aspects of higher education. Private sector universities shared the load of higher education to the extent of 15 percent in terms of student community and 16.5 percent in terms of teaching staff.
Democracy in Nigeria is characterised by corruption, irregularities and injustice. The level of political hostility in the country has resulted in loss of lives and properties and as a result, there have been hindrances to peace and national development to prevail in Nigeria. Hence, the ugly political developments have generated a lot of concerns and questions such as what are the causes of the political unrest in Nigeria? Is democracy really paying off as a political system in Nigeria? What has been the result of democracy in Nigeria? Can there be a better political system in Nigeria? If so, can Islamic political system fulfil the longing of Nigerians? Answers to these questions shall form the body of this research. The research discovers the absence of fairness in the electoral process and bad governance in Nigeria. This research reveals the flaws in effectiveness of democracy as a system of government in Nigeria. It proposes adopting an alternative model of governance. Lastly, this research contemplates the Islamic political model for a better Nigeria.
Drought is the most recurring environmental stress that reduces seed cotton yield, oil contents and fiber quality of cotton crop. Cotton provides raw material to textile sector, the most important sector of Pakistan. It provides livelihood to rural and urban people. Keeping in view the importance of cotton, present study was conducted in the glasshouse (Experiment 1) and research area (Experiment 2) of the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan. Thirty upland BT cotton genotypes were collected from different research institutes (Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Central Cotton Research Institute (CCRI), Multan and Ayyub Agricultural Research Institute (AARI), Faisalabad. The genotypes/cultivars were screened for drought tolerance under glasshouse conditions on the basis of root length, shoot length, root dry and fresh weight, shoot fresh and dry weight, cell membrane stability, excised leaf water loss, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, proline content and relative water content. Two tolerant (FH-114 and CIM-602) and two susceptible (TARZAN-1 and A-555) genotypes/cultivars were selected to develop F1, F2 and backcross populations. All populations (F1, F2, BC1 and BC2) developed from the crosses along with parents were grown under water deficit stress in field conditions. Drought stress was imposed by withholding water. Data regarding the traits, relative water content, excised leaf water loss, cell membrane stability, transpiration rate, stomatal conductance and proline content with different agronomic and fiber quality traits was recorded from F2 plants along with parental and back cross populations. The correlation analysis revealed that relative water content and cell membrane stability had correlation with yield. Positive correlation of relative water content with cell membrane stability revealed that the genes which help plant maintain relative water content may also be indirectly involved for cell membrane stability and could be associated with drought tolerance in cotton. Additive, dominance as well as gene interaction was found in the inheritance of almost all the traits under drought stress condition. Narrow sense heritability estimates showed that the traits were highly heritable so, considerable progress may be made in breeding for drought tolerance. All the genotypes were studied for genetic variation at molecular level using simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. A total of 40 primers were tested for the estimation of genetic diversity among 30 parental genotypes, out of which 20 were found polymorphic. Total number of alleles amplified by these primers were 116 with an average of 5.8 allele per locus. Twenty primers were found to be polymorphic showing 13% genetic diversity. The genotypes FH-142 and TARZAN-1 were least similar among all the genotypes studied showing 78% similarity whereas, genotypes FH-113 and FH-114 showed high similarity (98%) among all. Genetic transformation was done via pollen tube mediated transformation method and GUS assay was performed on seed, embryo and leaf of transgenic plant progeny. Out of 200 plants assayed, only 7 T1 plant seedlings showed intense activity of GUS. Polymerase chain reaction also confirmed the presence of bar and dreb2 genes in the transformed plants. So, pollen tube mediated transformation could be effective for developing drought tolerant material. It is also suggested that exotic germplasm must be included in the present breeding material to broaden the genetic base so that varieties could be developed having better yield and tolerance to drought stress. On the basis of results deduced from present studies, it is concluded that agronomic, physiological, biochemical and molecular approaches could be used to develop better yielding genotypes with good quality fiber having tolerance against drought stress.