Empowered or not? Principals’ Understanding of Empowerment in the Context of College Administration

Principals are the leaders of the colleges and empowerment makes them effective leaders and head teachers. The study aims to examine college principals’ understanding of empowerment to determine the nature of this concept associated with college administration. Phenomenological research approach was used to explore the phenomenon after the literature review. The sample of the study was delimited to twelve principals of the Government Associate colleges, Government Graduate colleges, and Govt. Associate/Graduate Colleges of Commerce in Sahiwal Division. A semi-structured interview was used to collect the data from the principals of each category of colleges who were purposively selected. The emergent themes revealed that the principals were less empowered; they were empowered ‘theoretically’, and they were empowered ‘in papers’ merely. It is suggested that the Government should empower the principals in a true letter and spirit so that they can work as ‘fully empowered administrators’ to run the colleges as per the policies and standards set by the higher education department for quality education.