Degree of uncertainty: For thesis fraud, a real boot

CIIT terminates pro-rector for plagiarism, swords dangles over his job as NTS head.

ISLAMABAD: The Comsats Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) Board of Governors on Friday removed the varsity pro-rector, less than two weeks after his doctorate was cancelled over plagiarism.

Haroon Rashid, who was confirmed to have plagiarised large parts of his PhD thesis, becomes the second varsity boss to have been fired over plagiarism in the past five years.

As fallout from the decision, Rashid is also likely to be removed from his post as the chief executive officer of National Testing Service.

In 2011, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government removed University of Peshawar Vice Chancellor Dr Azmat Hayat Khan after plagiarised content was found in a book he authored. According to sources privy to the development, the firing was a unanimous decision among BoG members.

Rashid, who was already abroad on leave, was previously given two chances to personally clarify his position. On June 11, the BoG suspended Rashid and also cancelled his leave. The BoG gave him till June 17 (Friday) to appear in person to clear his name, but he did not show up, following which the members unanimously decided to send himpacking, two years after he was hired.

Sources present at the meeting said that a few members suggested his removal status be backdated to 2006 — the year the thesis was submitted with Preston University. While such a move would impose a serious financial penalty on Rashid, other members opposed the idea because backdated removal would raise question marks over decisions he had taken during his tenure.

On June, 6 the Preston University Academic Council cancelled Rashid’s PhD degree. The move came after a complaint filed by the HEC in September 2015, after its Quality Assurance Agency found 72 per cent plagiarism in his thesis.

Probe

Preston had formed a four-member probe body to probe the charges independently.  In its final report, the body concluded that the “thesis does not justify the award of a PhD degree.”

The report 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 PhD thesis submitted by Rafiqul Zaman Khan to Hamdard University, New Delhi, India in 2004.

NTS

Sources said the BoG also discussed Rashid’s fate as CEO of NTS. He has headed the testing service since its inception. The service has previously been accused of misappropriation and has discussed by various parliamentary panels as well. The service has also been under criticism as five of its board members are employees of CIIT, including rector Junaid Zaidi.

The sources suggested that the board of directors would likely remove Rashid from NTS in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, the HEC website lists 38 blacklisted professors and teachers — all alleged plagiarists — who retain teaching jobs due to the inaction of their employers.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18^th, 2016.