The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has warned universities against opening new sub-campuses without seeking no-objection certificates (NOCs) from the regulatory authority.
The HEC issued a letter to vice-chancellors of all public and private sector universities after some universities published advertisements in a section of the press expressing their intent to open new campuses in several cities, said a press release issued on Friday.
The HEC said that it will also request provincial higher education departments to develop a strategy to prevent and discourage such illegal activities.
The HEC has also warned students and parents to beware of illegal campuses, as degrees issued by such campuses would not be recognised unless they meet the minimum requirement set by the regulatory body.
The letter further warned that universities must not admit students to their regional campuses unless they acquire NOCs from the HEC.
According to a source in the HEC, more than a dozen applications seeking NOCs were pending with the regulatory body, while a similar number of universities were running regional campuses without NOCs.
Most recently, Bahauddin Zakaria University’s Lahore campus was sealed in July for failing to obtain an the NOC from the HEC or from the Punjab Higher Education Department.
According to documents, the University of Punjab, the University of Karachi, the University of Sindh, the University of Balochistan, Peshawar University, Gomal University, Shah Abdul Latif University, the Islamia University, Hamdard University, the International Islamic University, the University of Gujrat, the University of Sargodha, the Government College University, Bahauddin Zakaria University, the Government College Women University and the Federal Urdu University of Sciences and Technology have regional campuses across Pakistan but none of them have taken NOCs from the HEC.
“No sub-campus, branch or outpost shall be established or franchised without prior approval of the HEC,” says one of the guidelines set by the regulatory body for universities intending to establish regional campuses.
The Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi has also opened a sub-campus, the Barani Institute of Management, without taking an NOC from the HEC. The Urdu University’s Faisalabad campus has also been established with an NOC.
HEC Chairperson Mukhtar Ahmad said that they were now finalising teams to visit such campuses to take necessary action against them.
“I will also raise this issue with provincial higher education departments or commissions on November 18,” he said.
Under the HEC rule, following a request for an NOC by a university, an HEC team visits the campus to check basic requirements such as student-teacher ratio, number of PhD professors, laboratories and other requirements before approving or rejecting the request.
Varsities, however, have had long-running issues with the rule. “On the one hand, the HEC asks us to increase enrolment and raise our own finances and on the other hand, they are grilling us by sending us warning letters declaring our sub-campuses illegal,” GCU Faisalabad Vice Chancellor Dr Zakir Hussain said at a recent vice chancellors’ meeting.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 15th, 2014.
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