Whither the HEC’s quality control?

HEC is no angel when it comes to quality control and institutions run by the forces are especially left unmonitored.

Finally the government has decided to retain HEC under pressure from its new partner, the PML-Q. In doing so, Islamabad has caved into the colonial argument of a highly centrist force like the HEC having greater capacity than the provinces. The ‘black locals’ from the smaller provinces do not have the capacity to run higher education. Punjab, which is the largest province and the biggest beneficiary of centralization of power, wants to retain the HEC. In doing so it is totally oblivious of the consequences it will have in how the other provinces will view Punjab.

            However, a more important question is that what gives Punjab’s political forces the impression that HEC has greater capacity to manage and monitor higher education? Although it is not possible to dissect the Commission completely in a 700-word piece, lets just look at one particular aspect regarding who has benefitted the most through the Commission.

            According to the HEC’s annual report 2009-2010 the biggest beneficiary are the force’s universities. These universities have their own sources of funding as well as other means to keep themselves sustained. These institutions are definitely better placed then the public sector universities that require more resources. Interestingly, the force’s universities are also the ones that have not been carefully monitored or pulled up because they have not applied HEC rules regarding recruitment of faculty or principles of management.

The most obvious example pertains to the Bahria University. Despite HEC rules that the rector has to have a doctorate, the institutions continues to use the criterion of having a vice-admiral as its rector whose basic education is much lower and he may not even have the experience of running an educational institution (in comparison, the Air University does have a rector who holds a doctorate).

            It is worth pointing out that recently, on the occasion of the Chairman HEC delivering a talk at the university that one of its lecturers asked a critical question and was shouted down by the rector and then terminated from service.

Qualification is certainly not a consideration because the tendency is to absorb retired naval officers and their children. The trend is that qualified civilians are employed mostly at entry-level position with lesser pay and less-competent naval officers with questionable degree at the level of assistant professor. No one notices the conflict of interest, for example, occurring when a serving naval officer doing a degree from the said institution also happens to be working as the rector’s staff officer.

The HEC didn’t penalize the university for not disclosing and returning 20 per cent of the one-and-a-half million pounds received in funding provided by the Commission for faculty development at a British university. The commission given by the British university should have been declared to the HEC since these were public funds. Bahria decided instead to send additional faculty for training, which was a good idea. However, it didn’t send more then two people and there is no clear accountability of the HEC’s and other money which it received.  

The HEC has not taken notice of the fact that the institution often appoints higher faculty without following any procedure such as advertisement or demanding proof of qualification. The last rector, for instance, employed a man, who claimed to have two Ph.Ds, vast experience of working in Europe’s corporate sector and Pakistan civil service without checking any of the claims. He wasn’t fired until he had taken the university to the cleaners and cost it dearly in penalties imposed by the Competition Commission of Pakistan.

Sadly, the navy’s top bosses treat higher education on par with their bakery business – any uniformed guy can run the show with no concern for qualification. Thus, a gang of five manipulates the university. HEC contributes through its criminal silence.

 





 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 1^st, 2011.