CIIT pro-rector’s degree void

Preston University cancelled his degree over plagiarism; stay order held back action

ISLAMABAD: The academic council of Preston University, Islamabad has withdrawn a doctorate issued to its former student — incumbent Comsats Institute of Information Technology Pro-Rector Haroon Rashid — after his thesis was found to have been heavily plagiarised.

The decision was taken by the varsity on Monday in after a June 3 Islamabad High Court ruling which vacated a stay order on the issue.



Rashid had approached the court last year when a four-member body submitted their report regarding the thesis he had submitted to Preston University, which the HEC initially found to be 72 per cent plagiarised.

Preston University Spokesperson Fazal Elahi confirmed the cancellation of Rashid’s degree. “The academic council of Preston University has cancelled the degree of their graduate after thorough consultation,” he explained.

He remarked that the academic council met on Monday and found the charges against Rashid to be correct, after which it decided to retract the award of the degree.

According to sources, the CIIT Board of Governors is also meeting on June 11 to discuss the situation, which affects a senior varsity staffer who also happens to head its subsidiary, National Testing Service.

Probe

After the HEC detected the plagiarism in Rashid’s thesis, the university formed a four-member probe body, which includes FAST University Dean Dr Ayub Alvi, Abasyn University Vice Chancellor Dr Jamil Ahmad, Barani Institute of Information Technology Director Dr Jamil Sarwar, and Arid Agriculture University Quality Enhancement Cell’s Dr Riaz Ahmed, the latter of whom was acting as the HEC representative in the body.



In its final report, the body concluded that the “thesis does not justify the award of a PhD degree.”

The thesis was submitted in 2006.

Out of adjectives

The report, also presented before the court, carried a chapter-by-chapter analysis which included comments such as “very highly plagiarised”, “highly plagiarised” and “extremely plagiarised”.

The report says that most of the content has been lifted from an original submitted by Rafiqul Zaman Khan to Hamdard University, New Delhi, India in the PhD programme in 2004.

Haroon was also found to have plagiarised from a thesis submitted by John Edward Stone at the University of Missouri, USA, and several other research papers.

Preston University Chancellor Dr Abdul Basit forwarded the report to the HEC, saying that “the outcome of further action(s) to be taken by university will be shared subsequently.”

The similarity index of chapter six has been found “highly plagiarised”, with 81 per cent matching various sources.

At least 58 per cent has been copied from a research paper published in the Malaysian Journal of Computer Science in 1999.

About 69 per cent of the contents of chapter 10 were also found matching another article. At some places, tables have been copied with the same reference and data, while one chapter makes no acknowledgement of lecture notes for students of UC Berkley, USA from which data has been ‘borrowed’.

Rashid was given the national award Sitara-e-Imtiaz by the previous Pakistan People’s Party government and has been working at CIIT for over five years.

Preston University has also taken multiple hits to its reputation over the past few years. Recently, the HEC’s quality assurance team had directed the varsity to shut down their PhD and Mphil programmes, citing various lapses or shortcomings, while warning that the degrees of students enrolled in or after 2014 would not be attested or verified.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 8^th, 2016.