HEC closure of PhD and MPhil programmes

The Higher Education Commission’s (HEC) closure of 31 doctorate programmes and 26 MPhil programmes across Pakistani universities as part of its quality control efforts is laudable. The Quality Assurance Agency of the HEC has become active in its role to ensure that Pakistani universities meet certain criteria when it comes to imparting higher education. Such measures elucidate that higher education and academia in Pakistan are moving in the right direction. Raising standards may also ensure that in the future, more students opt for domestic universities for higher education rather than looking to go abroad. While recently, seven Pakistani universities ranked among the world’s top 800 universities on The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, we just might see more Pakistani universities appear on this list and possibly at higher ratings later on.

A higher education programme’s ranking is determined by several factors, including the quality of its research and the number of peer-reviewed journal publications its professors churn out annually, the facilities and resources provided to students, the variety of programmes offered, and the job and career outlooks of its graduates. The reason that 48.7 per cent of youth, at least in Karachi, want to emigrate from Pakistan, as cited by a recent survey at Karachi University in collaboration with George Mason University in Virginia, USA, is partly owed to the lack of career and employment opportunities here. Keeping a regular check on whether graduate programmes meet set benchmarks will gradually raise the standard of higher education in the country, thus providing better career opportunities for graduates from local universities and making them competitive for the local job market, where often foreign university graduates sweep the positions, sometimes even starting at higher pay scales. The programmes that have been shut down or suspended must now be guided by the HEC on how to meet clearly outlined benchmarks. Considering that Pakistan has a dearth of universities and an overall dilapidated state of education, be it primary, secondary, or post-graduate, the ultimate goal should be to collaboratively help varsities raise their standards.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 26^th, 2016.

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