Higher Education Commission halts 24 PhD programmes

Islamabad: Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) has closed down 24 PhD academic programmes of International Islamic University (IIU) Islamabad for not fulfilling the required criteria set by the government.

The HEC also ordered to stop all academic activities in these programmes till the fulfillment of the set requirements.

As per the PhD Programme Review Report gathered by the PhD Programme Review Committee of the commission, copy which has been obtained by a private news source, the Committee visited the different departments of IIU and inspected the status of various PhD degree programmes.

The PhD Programme Review Committee is founded by Higher Education commission to assess the implementation status of set criteria by the Commission for all government as well as private sector universities and Degree Awarding Institutions (DAIs).

During the course of reviews, the Committee found that a lot of the PhD programmes are not fulfilling the criteria standardized by higher education commission.

According to the repport, the Committee reviewed 32 PhD degree programmes being offered in different departments of university.

Out of these porgrammes, 24 programmes were not fulfilling the set criteria for their working and just 8 programmes were obeying the rules of HEC.

7 programmes are completely stopped for the absence of faculty members for the teaching of these programmes.

According to the rules, it is necessary that at least 3 related full time faculty members should be appointed in the department.

As per the Committee analysis, the list of closed programmes concludes as PhD in Econometrics as there is not a single full time PhD faculty member, Mechanical Engineering is also short of 3 permanent PhD faculty members, PhD in Engineering Management also does not meet the criteria, PhD in Marketing did not fulfill the requirement of permanent PhD faculty members as it possesses just one such faculty member.

Away from the above mentioned programs, 3 other programmes have also been closed by the Committee because of the shortage of the similar arrangements.

These programmes include Technology Management, Islamic Banking and Finance, Pakistan Study and Political Science that have one, zero, one and two Permanent PhD faculty members respectively.

The Committee ordered that IIU should halt all activities of these programmes including classes, exams, thesis, defence, award of degrees till the appointment of required staff on permanent basis.

The 15 other PhD programmes in the university including Computer Sciences, Physics, Mathematic, Urdu, English, Electrical Engineering, Management, Finance, Media and Communication, Law, Shariah, International Relations, Sociology, Psychology and History were halted and were asked by the Committee to stop 'fresh induction of students.'

"The university should admit the scholars subject to the permission of the commission. The programmes for registered students will run provided that other indefinite deficiencies are rectified," recommended the Review Committee.

The Review Committee is of the view that another PhD programme in Natural Sciences needs to be split as the Natural Sciences Programme is part of the Centre for Inter Disciplinary Research in Basic Sciences. In its findings, the Review Committee said that the university is more focused in quantity instead of quality at the doctoral level. It also directed the IIU to revise this approach.

Moreover, the Committee also noticed the procedural errors in PhD programmes.

The Review Report gathered by the Committee cited that new PhD programmes were launched after October 2013 without seeking a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from higher education commission.

It further cited flaws in the examination system, foreign evaluation of scholars, delays in PhD programmes and similarly irregularities.

Though, the committee ordered to remove these delays immediately. The Committee also observed that Dr. Muhammad Sher, Dean Faculty of Basic and Applied Sciences, is named in the blacklist scholars by higher education commission however he is still supervising PhD scholars.

The Committee also observed the absence of lab research equipment and ordered for enhancement of research facilities.

The HEC confirmed that so fat, the varsity has not submitted the compliance report.

"Still waiting for response from the IIU ", it added.

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