January 2005

Byline: Salman Siddiqui
Title: Certified Lies II
Blurb: Arena Multimedia vs. Quality Education

Arena Multimedia has been in the business of providing professional education in the field of multimedia for the past seven years. After visiting one of its branches undercover assumingly to seek admissions in their diploma and bachelors program, this author questioned the credibility of its services in the last November issue of SPIDER. Here the student counselor had given not only inadequate information regarding its affiliation status of its bachelors program called BIM with the Newport Institute of Communication and Economics (NICE) but also false information concerning the approval of its diploma courses from the Sindh Board of Technical Education (SBTE).
Terming it a ‘one off case’ Arshad Khalil, the Master Franchiser of Arena Multimedia, insists that there’s no policy in place at Arena to deliberately hide or misinform people in order to lure students into their institute and informs that after the above stated incident he had called in the heads of all his branches to advise them on providing precise information.
In July last year, the SBTE had issued a warning to "10 various private educational institutions in Karachi against offering courses franchised from Aptech, which are not approved from any accrediting body in Pakistan." Out of those 10, three were branches of Arena. Calling it an ‘unfortunate incident’ Arshad says that “the SBTE had issued the warning without getting in touch with us. This was primarily aimed at Aptech Computer Education Centers (ACE). We then launched a strong complaint with SBTE that we had always wanted to get registered with them, but only didn’t do so before because earlier SBTE didn’t (show interest to) evaluate the courses of Multimedia.” Although still not approved, Arshad showed documentary proof of the evaluation committee formed and claimed that by the end of January, all Arena courses will get the necessary stamp of recognition from SBTE.
Arena Multimedia itself is not a degree awarding institution but infact issues degrees for its bachelors program through NICE. In a recent ad, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) placed NICE amongst the worst educational institutions in the country. Under the headline "Public Alert on Substandard Private Universities", the report declares that NICE is "Seriously Deficient" in meeting even the minimum standards set out by the authority. Further it states that by February, 2007 the federal cabinet will withdraw the charter of NICE and other such shoddy institutes. Now the question is what future holds for those unfortunate students who have paid large sums of 2 lakh plus rupees in tuition fee to Arena for this three year bachelors program?
Surprisingly, in spite of this alarming situation, Arshad sees ‘tremendous’ promise in the future of his bachelors students, proclaiming that the skills passed on at Arena will get them the jobs available in the market. Highlighting the fact that “the problem lies with NICE and not with Arena”, the Master Franchiser is now planning to switch over to Mohammad Ali Jinnah University (MAJU),a university currently rated at C by HEC as compared to D of NICE, for affiliation. In any case Arena has to stick with NICE for at least the whole of next year, since about 40 students are still currently enrolled in BIM needing just about six more months to complete their degree requirements. Currently All new enrollments in Arena’s BIM program have been put on hold.
So why did Arena approach a substandard university like NICE in the first place? According to Arshad, “When I started (the BIM program) four years back, many universities here in Pakistan didn’t think that multimedia is a course worthy of awarding a degree on.” On failing to secure affiliation status from any of the reputable universities, Arena was left with no other option at that time but to associate itself with NICE. In the present scene where the hype of multimedia is at an all time high, Arshad says that he has many options with him and has been approached by many universities such as MAJU for affiliation.
On the allegation that Arena charges exorbitant fees for its courses, Arshad counters that “Arena is in fact catering to people from not so affluent classes who are in need of jobs.” Charging an average of about 5000 Rs. per month, Arshad says he’s helpless in doing so since “I can’t teach students at 2000 Rs. per month and at the same time also provide them a creative environment with good teachers.” In any case he informs us that Arena arranges for loans sponsored by some private donor companies to deserving students who can’t afford their fees and currently they are about 100 such students studying at Arena that utilize these loans. Moreover last year about 460 students out of the 1000 students passed out from Arena were successfully able to secure jobs.
Setting aside the criticism leveled by different local leaders from the production and animation houses that say Arena focuses only on teaching tools, Arshad says “Definitely we teach the tools that are in demand in the market since Arena is a professional institute which has an aim to impart skills to people so that they can earn and get jobs.”
Admitting that ‘Arena isn’t the best institute and has many rooms for improvement’, one might agree with Arshad when he says that “if you minus Arena out of the whole equation of training skilled manpower in multimedia you aren’t left with any other good options.”