HEC faces uphill task to rein undergrad programmes

Commission says its quality check of these courses will be carried out in spring 2018

ISLAMABAD: Although the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has shut down about 246 PhD and MPhil programmes across the country, it still has a long way to go in reining the undergraduate programmes of the country.

The HEC’s overall quality visit teams, in four-years, have reviewed about 524 MPhil and PhD programmes in over 84 public and private universities. On the other hand the commission’s monitoring team also approved about 278 programmes for meeting the minimum requirements.

According to HEC, about 162 programmes have been closed during these visits due to non-availability of PhD faculty. The minimum requirement for running a Phd programme is that a varsity must have at least two full time teachers prior to launch of these programmes.

Similarly, about 84 programmes have been closed temporarily due to excessive enrolment of students. The standard set by the commission, which resulted in the closure of these programmes, was that one PhD teacher can supervise a total of twelve MS students at one particular time with no more than five PhD students. While one MPhil or an MS teacher can supervise five MPhil or MS students.



Ensuring quality has been a big hurdle for the commission as many varsities neglect quality and focus on “business, enrolment and numbers.”

According to HEC chairperson Mukhtar Ahmad, “With the devolution of powers it has become a tough task to ensure quality at campuses as varsities claim to have autonomy or their governance structure is dreadful.”

The universities in Punjab and Sindh have been using their provincial higher education body’s cover to legitimise their violation of HEC criteria, especially in the case of few campuses in Lahore and illegal and unauthorised programmes in Karachi.

However, the HEC is yet to touch the undergraduate programmes running unhindered in the country without a proper laid out procedure of HEC and no-objection certificates. Currently, there are about 150 universities and degree awarding institutes, including colleges, which are being run without an NOC. HEC has time and again announced that it is yet to recognise or verify degrees of such institutions but still thousands of students continue to be enrolled.



The HEC has stated that the visits by their teams to check the quality of undergraduate programmes would be carried out in spring 2018. However, it would be difficult for the commission to achieve their goal due to a lack of manpower, will and external influences.

Meanwhile, those privy to the development say that HEC has also been sidestepping or looking the other way in terms of specific group of universities for multiple reasons.

There have been clear violations in programmes of Newports Institute of Communications and Economics; Superior Group of Colleges, University of South Asia among others. However, no action has been taken against them as of yet.

When asked, the HEC denies that it has extended any ‘leniency to anyone’. It also added that it was their first priority to protect the students’ future and ‘the varsities have been given an opportunity to fix their discrepancies’.

In its reply, the HEC mentioned the example of Global Institute Lahore where programmes were stopped and at the end of the day it was the students who suffered. After the closure of some programmes students are still running from pillar to post as other universities are not accepting them in the middle of their academic activities and the institute is also not willing to issue their transfer certificates.

Meanwhile, the quality visits of undergraduate programmes would also be a problem for the HEC as the four-year tenure of the HEC chairperson is set to expire in March 2018.