Pakistan

CIIT rector’s thesis deemed unworthy of PhD degree

The HEC Quality Assurance (QA) Division probed the thesis through its plagiarism detection software ‘Turnitin’

Riazul Haq June 05, 2016

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 5^th, 2016.

COMMENTS (4)

Sarwat | 8 years ago | Reply @Hugo Chavez: You are right, and Dr. Kalim Uddin Qureshi knew everything from day one. Dr. Kalim Uddin Qureshi supervised his first student Rafiqul Zaman Khan when both were working in a University in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in fact, Dr Kalim handed Khan's thesis to Haroon when he was on vacation in Pakistan and was teaching at Abbottabad in a part time capacity. Kalim's brother, Nadeem Uddin Qureshi, also supported everything to gain a better position and salary (in return) at CIIT.

Hugo Chavez | 8 years ago | Reply A particular Dr. Kalim Uddin Qureshi supervised both thesis merely an year apart. The stated professor currently holds a position at Kuwait University and has been a part of NIE, a place where (Dr.?) Haroon Rashid used to work at.

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Sarwat | 8 years ago | Reply This is only one case which has come into attention. Many other CIIT officials who are doing part-time PhD from UK and other institutes are using another tactic; they are getting their research papers and dissertations written by others by paying them. It will be near impossible to catch such culprits. How miserable and sad is this.

Aik_Paki | 8 years ago | Reply When the Pakistani elite such as well known politicians, ministers, leaders, bureaucrats and Govt officials are not ashamed of doing corruption and amassing ill gotten money in foreign countries then our so-called academicians will also go for plagiarism to become a Doctor. This is the height of corruption and Preston University is very well known of facilitating such degrees. Even Preston has taken its name form Princeton Univ long time back to fool the students in Pakistan. A shameful state of affairs of a number of educational institution in Pakistan who make money form poor Pakistani students and their paprents.

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