CIIT rector’s thesis deemed unworthy of PhD degree
The HEC Quality Assurance (QA) Division probed the thesis through its plagiarism detection software ‘Turnitin’
Rumours that Dr Haroon Rashid had plagiarised his doctorate thesis were doing the rounds but the Higher Education Commission (HEC) began investigating the issue after it received a complaint about it last month. PHOTO: ciit-atd.edu.pk
ISLAMABAD:
An inquiry body looking into plagiarism charges against Comsats Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) pro-rector and chief executive officer Haroon Rashid concluded in its report that his thesis was not worthy of a PhD degree.
Details emerged after the said report was shared with the Islamabad High Court (IHC) when Rashid moved the court in October last year.
On Friday, the court dismissed the pro-rector’s plea that he had filed against HEC, challenging the commission’s probe into his “plagiarised doctoral thesis”.
A four-member body was formed by Preston University, Islamabad, following a letter from the HEC on September 18 last year to investigate the plagiarism case against him.
The thesis, titled ‘Parallel Scientific Applications Scheduling on Distributed Computing System’, was submitted to Preston University in 2006.
The HEC Quality Assurance (QA) Division probed the thesis through its plagiarism detection software ‘Turnitin’ and found the plagiarism level to be 72 per cent. The committee held three meetings between October 5 and October 12 at Preston University.
According to the report, most of the content was lifted from the original thesis of Rafiqul Zaman Khan submitted at Hamdard University in New Delhi, India in the PhD programme in 2004 titled ‘Empirical Study of Task Partitioning, Scheduling and Load Balancing Strategies for Distributed Images of Computing System’.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 5th, 2016.
An inquiry body looking into plagiarism charges against Comsats Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) pro-rector and chief executive officer Haroon Rashid concluded in its report that his thesis was not worthy of a PhD degree.
Details emerged after the said report was shared with the Islamabad High Court (IHC) when Rashid moved the court in October last year.
On Friday, the court dismissed the pro-rector’s plea that he had filed against HEC, challenging the commission’s probe into his “plagiarised doctoral thesis”.
A four-member body was formed by Preston University, Islamabad, following a letter from the HEC on September 18 last year to investigate the plagiarism case against him.
The thesis, titled ‘Parallel Scientific Applications Scheduling on Distributed Computing System’, was submitted to Preston University in 2006.
The HEC Quality Assurance (QA) Division probed the thesis through its plagiarism detection software ‘Turnitin’ and found the plagiarism level to be 72 per cent. The committee held three meetings between October 5 and October 12 at Preston University.
According to the report, most of the content was lifted from the original thesis of Rafiqul Zaman Khan submitted at Hamdard University in New Delhi, India in the PhD programme in 2004 titled ‘Empirical Study of Task Partitioning, Scheduling and Load Balancing Strategies for Distributed Images of Computing System’.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 5th, 2016.