HEC closes 110 PhD programmes due to lack of quality

Islamabad: The higher education commission of Pakistan (HEC) has closed down almost 110 PhD programmes in government as well as private sector universities due to the lack of quality.

This statement was given by the chairperson of higher education commission Dr Mukhtar Ahmed on Wednesday during his address to a seminar names as “Higher Education in Pakistan: Status, Trends and Prospects” arranged by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), Islamabad.

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The main objective behind organizing this seminar was to discuss the prevalent scenario, upcoming openings as well as challenges faced by higher education sector in Pakistan and also the steps and strategies being taken up by the commission to cater the matters.

A large number of senior academicians comprising of the vice chancellors, deans, head of departments and research supervisors were among the partakers.

The chairperson of HEC said that the commission will not compromise on the academic corruption in spite of all the pressures the national institute had to face from powerful quarters.

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He furthermore added that the present focus of higher education commission is to improve the quality of higher education as well as the standard of academic research in Pakistan and to make sure that the research being produced is advantageous for the country as well as for the society.

The competition for rankings as well as the impact factor is useless if the real impact of knowledge creation is not present.

Ahmed also added that it took commission 7 years to obtain an international engineering membership along with the conjoin efforts of the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC).

Now the graduates of engineering from Pakistan can get a job anywhere in the world without going through any extra exam for recognition in other states.

Ahmed said that “We are working on different partnerships as well as enhancing the complete standard of education in Pakistan instead of focusing on the numbers game. Numbers are of no use if the aspirants are not well armed for the professional life.”

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Though, he shared that the overall situation had improved in last few years along with a record 12 thousand publications coming out Last year in 2016.

He added that “We have adopted a strict no tolerance policy on copy plus the research culture is finally established in the country. Though, we still have to go a long way to compete along with the western criterions.”