Does Long Duration of the Degree Exhaust the Students? A Case Study of Government College University Faisalabad

This research study aims to examine the reasons behind the students’ exhaustiveness that is due to long duration of the degree program. It is noted that those students who exhaust or tired from the long study hours are found less learner. The study focuses only on four year programs which are offered by Government College University Faisalabad. The sample consists of 50 students that are collected with the help of a questionnaire designed by the researcher. The convenient sampling technique is applied for the data collection. Student’s exhaustiveness was taken as dependent variable while gender, distance, teachers’ favoritisms, environment of the university and holidays waiting are considered as explanatory variables. Descriptive and Graphical analysis is used for taking the significant results. This research helps us to understand the reason of students’ tiredness.


INTRODUCTION
This paper examines the students' exhaustiveness in Government College University Faisalabad.As a matter of fact, student views and tiredness has never been considered as an important issue by educational authorities.There could be many reasons behind the student's exhaustiveness like distance from home to university, environment of the class and university, financial constraints, teacher's attitudes, repetition of the courses, curriculum activities, infrastructure, and many other grounds.Students may get tired from their own personal reasons but this research study only considered the university's related factors.The government College University is located at Allama Iqbal Road Faisalabad.It is one of the leading universities in the Pakistan.It is placed at number 5 th in HEC (Higher Education Commission) general ranking 2013 in large university group.Government College University has embarked on a new phase of history.The university is busy in the preparation of a development plan both in terms of education as well as physical development.The hallmark of the University's educational philosophy is the reconstruction of human thought in all its facets on the foundation of our social, moral and religious values.The university aims to provide students an enabling environment where dialogue is encouraged and ideas envisioned.The university is providing the intellectual and physical infrastructure that will hold students to the highest moral and ethical values.The university will achieve these goals with the cooperation of public and private sectors as well as the faculty and students of1 G.C.U.F.

Long duration of degrees
Bachelor programs of 4 years are offered after intermediate by the university with the approval of Higher Education Commission (HEC).This research study is considering the long duration degrees for the analysis and by the long duration of the degree we mean that degree that has at least 4 years or 8 semester duration.As per the rule of the University, "the duration for the B.Sc. (Hons.)/ BS/BBA shall not be less than eight and more than 12 semesters.While there are 2 semesters (fall and spring) of 18 weeks each in an academic year.The commencement of semesters is regulated by the Academic Council.
This research helps us to understand the reasons behind the students exhaustive of GCUF.The policy measures may help the authorities to reduce the students' exhaustiveness.

Area of the research
This research is focusing only the long duration Programs offered by the Government College University Faisalabad without the gender discrimination.The total sample of 50 students is taken for bivariate analysis.

Research Question
This research study will answer  Why students of GCUF exhausted from the long duration of the degree?

International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
October 2013, Vol. 3, No. 10 ISSN: 2222-6990 Objectives The research study has the following objectives:  To know the factors behind the students' exhaustiveness. Policy formulation under the light of results.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Review of previous literature throws some light on the students' exhaustiveness therefore it is necessary to have an overview of previous work.
Afzal, et al. ( 2010) conducted a research to know the reason behind the students' low academic performance.They found that the motivation was a big reason of low academic performance of the students.They collected the data of 342 students studying in the various universities of the Pakistan with the help of a questioner.The study described that students' motivations dimensions extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation had a positive impact on academic performance of students.The study found positive and mutually causal relationship between student's motivation and student's academic performance.Students who were more motivated performing better and student who perform better become more motivated.Abbasi, et al. (2011) explored the students' satisfaction level of the facilities that were presented by the Pakistani institutions of higher education.The data were collected with the help of a questioner through convenience sampling from Bahauddin Zakariya University (BZU).Satisfaction had been described in only three areas like classroom, transportation, and prayer facilities.Interestingly, no major differences of opinion had been witnessed among male or female individuals.It was found that satisfaction level was low and the results indicated that students were uncomfortable from the educational services which were provided by Pakistani institutions.
Furthermore Roach and Lemasters (2006) conducted a study to know the satisfaction level of the students from the online education system.They found that students were more stratified from the online educational system because of easy access to learning.The student did not have to travel to the universities, as well as did not need to be in formal dresses etc; they could get other facilities at their home easily.(Willging and Johnson, 2004) found the reason behind the students' decision to drop out the institutional courses.Online data were collected from the students who dropped out the online courses.They found that students got badly affected by the financial hindrances, job timing varies during the program and some system related problems, like too much lengthy assignments and difficult assignments etc.
Teachers' attitude towards students is also a big factor that can be a strong reason behind the students' exhaustiveness.Rehman, et al (2009) conducted a study to know the quality of teaching staff only at public sector universities.They found that teachers of universities need to learn the teaching methodology, curricular activities planning and need to improve educational deficiencies.They suggested that authority should enhance the teachers' benefits to get more good results and to make the teachers more efficient and honest to the teaching.

Data
Primary data of 50 male and female students were collected with the help of a questioner through convenient sampling technique.The target population was only those students who were enrolled in the 4 year programs.The ratio of female enrolled students were noted more than that of male students that is why sample consists of 30 female and 20 male students.We selected only those students of Government college university Faisalabad who had been enrolled here for more than 2 years because the admitted students might not have the sufficient knowledge about the university.

Methodology
Tabular analysis and bivariate and graphical analysis are used to take the better results.
Although the more econometric techniques can be applied to this data but for the sake of simplicity researchers used bivariate analysis.The graph is also used to depict the exact relationships between the dependent and independent variables.

Dependent variable
Students' Exhaustiveness is considered as depended variable, it is assigned 1 for those students who were exhausted from the degree, 2 for not exhausted from the degree and 3 for up to some extend exhausted.

Independent variables
For Gender, 1 was assigned for male and 2 for female.Years of being studied, distance, intention to take admission, environment, degree scope, faculty, repetition of courses, irritation, curriculum activities, holidays, teachers favored, finishing this degree, leading universities, good place for knowledge were considered as independent variables.These all were considered as categorical variables having 3 categories of each variable.The last question was 2 open ended question that was not considered in the calculation.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The discussions over the results are presented in this part; bivariate results are presented in bar charts and explained below.

Bivariate and Graphical analysis
2 Open ended question had different opinion of the respondents, therefore it was not included.
In this portion we explain only strong factors that were noted behind the student's exhaustiveness from the long duration of the degree with the help of bar charts.

Relationship of Exhaustiveness with Gender
Bar chart was used to explain the reasons of exhaustiveness, the above bar chart showed that female were more exhausted than the male students, it illustrate there was found gender based exhaustiveness.Females were found more exhaustive than male students as the green bar showed.Females might be more exhausted than male students due to certain problems, like difficulties in arrival and departure from the university, lesser job opportunities and choices, more sensitive about environment of the class and university etc. or perhaps female are tender gender.

Relationship of Exhaustiveness with distance
The above bar chart showed that students who travel more were noted more exhausted.More traveling found a cause of exhaustiveness.As the light yellow bar line showed in the bar chart.
The students who travel more than 60 minutes may cause the students mentally and physically tired that made them more exhausted.The expenses of traveling, hot and cold weather and tiredness from traveling could be a cause of exhaustiveness.

Relationship of Exhaustiveness with environment
It was explained to the respondents that environment means the curriculum activities, availability of study related assistant like library, internet, noise pollution and disputes among students, dressing and cultural exist in the universities.All the respondents keep this background in their minds and answered.It is shown from the above bar chart the students who claimed that the environment of the university was just satisfactory found more exhausted than the other students who answered that the university had good environment.Although the university has good environment but there is always very tough to cover all the areas in large institutes.

Relationship of Exhaustiveness with teacher's favoritism
As shown from the bar chart that those students who answered that the teachers favored some students found more exhausted from their degrees as compared to other students.Students got discouraged when they see their teacher do favoring some students in the class and it caused their exhaustiveness.The students may feel the mental pressure because of this injustice, they might think that they should not work hard to get good score in the exams but they just have to get closer to the teachers.This undue favor makes the student exhausted, unproductive, idol and lazy about their studies.

CONCLUSION
Although there were noted many factors that cause the exhaustiveness of the students.But we found four major factors that severely put an impact on the student's exhaustiveness.We found that the female proved tender gender that was why they get exhausted quickly as compare to the male.
The distance from the home to the university was found another strong factor that causes the student's exhaustiveness.Those students who travel a lot get exhausted quickly than those students who did not travel a lot.Although our data covers more females but it was noted that the male was also exhausted due to long traveling time.Environment of the class and the university was found another strong factor that causes the students exhaustiveness.The students who claimed that the environment of the class and university was not good found more exhausted than other students.Environment put a strong impact on the student's tiredness.Those students who considered that the environment in any terms was not good they got exhausted.
Teacher's attitude towards students also found a strong factor that causes student exhaustiveness.It was noted those students who had been experienced teachers' un-favoritism found more exhausted.According to that student that teacher who favors or un-favor the students ruined the merit.

Suggestions and Recommendations
 The university should provide the pick and drop facility for male and female students separately in all around the area of Faisalabad.Although the university is providing this facility, but that is not enough. Management cell of the university must take strong steps to keep the environment of the university well.Each department should also take steps to make the class' environment better. Teaching is considered as the profession of prophet hood and teachers must understand it.They must be honest to their teaching and treat every student equally.