HEC still at square one

New year promises new challenges for the education body

ISLAMABAD: Another year passed with the Higher Education Commission still struggling to resolve its in-house issues, ensure quality education, good governance in universities across the country, and trying to hold them together amid the devolution woes.

The new year also promises no relief to the education body only more challenges.

HEC made futile efforts at warning universities about setting minimum quality standards, defining a baseline for governance and being more transparent in their recruitment. The move seemed to be in vain, with the HEC itself making no effort to improve itself.

The body spent a large part of the year resolving the issue of Comsats Institute of Information Technology’s dual degree programme, which faced severe criticism, all the while being reluctant to fill in the post of its executive director and several posts.

On the other hand, the education body seemed to be losing power, with Punjab and Sindh taking provincial education matters in their own hands.

Parting ways

Universities in Sindh and Punjab are slowly parting ways with the HEC to get autonomy in funding, scholarships, and its quality standards.

The step might be welcoming in implementing the devolution plan, but is initiated with a compromise on quality standards.

Varsities in Punjab now hardly pay any heed to HEC notifications or advisories and deem the provincial ones priority.

The damage was witnessed in the mushroom growth of sub-campuses without federal NOCs, running institutions without meeting minimum criteria for quality, and recruiting professors and lecturers who do not fulfil the minimum qualification criteria for the post. Bahauddin Zakaria University Multan’s Lahore campus is one such example. It was closed for lacking an NOC, and reopened soon after, apparently in connivance with Punjab higher education officials.

The number of higher education institutes grew from 158 to 178 in 2015 across the country. With the body’s aim to establish varsities in every single district, however, given the current scenario it only seems to pile more pressure on HEC to maintain quality standards.

Misses of HEC

The HEC can claim an increase in funds for the development and recurring budget, scholarships, reimbursing Rs1 billion through the prime minister’s fee reimbursement programme but there is a lot at home which needs HEC’s attention and adversely impacted the higher education.

The post of ED remained vacant beside other key posts and the body was being run on an ad hoc basis. A new ED was appointed earlier this month, after 19 months, along with three advisors.

The HEC has not conducted its research rankings since 2011 and has no plans to do so in the near future. The universities ranking that was to be conducted in 2015 has been delayed for reasons best known to HEC.

HEC has also failed to comply with the Lahore High Court’s order of March 2014 to set up its own testing body for varsities’ admissions, scholarships though it claims to be working on the issue.

There is still no mechanism in place to verify or equate degrees since 2002 and it is expected that the education body in 2016 will would join hands with NADRA to evade chances of bogus or fake degrees and ensure transparency.

HEC will have to prove it can and it has the ability to handle not only issues but address it timely unlike its performance of the previous year.

The new year kicked off with a surprise for many when the HEC Chairperson Dr Mukhtar Ahmed nominated himself and the executive director for an honorarium of Rs 135,000 including a few vice chancellors and teachers of eminence as professor emeritus. The proposal, which is under consideration since 2013, was later removed from the agenda of the commission’s meeting held on January 11.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2016.