HEC fee deferment for students of flood-hit areas

Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed has announced that the students from flood-affected areas, enrolled at public and private universities, would get fee deferral for two semesters until they recover and stand on their feet.

Dr Ahmed said all public and private universities were working to facilitate people in the flood-hit areas, adding that veterinary universities had also been directed to support livestock in these devastated areas. “We are also working out a proper plan for compensating the universities in the flood-hit areas.”

The HEC chairman said, “Since technology and education are interlinked, we have to opt for policy to promote technology in the education sector of the country. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the idea of smart classrooms and technology did help in continuing the educational process sans any pause.”

He went on to say that in the coming years, due to the revolution in the IT sector, we will not have a formal need for buildings, and rather phones will be sufficient for acquiring and disseminating education. The future education will be online and there would be lab practices through virtual simulations.

“We will adopt optimum world practices to ensure quality education through online and latest technology, and around 10 to 15% budget allocation is mandatory for each university for the distance education system, which will be increased to 50 per cent after some time with a proper plan and consultation of all private and public universities,” he claimed.

Dr Ahmed said the HEC had also launched programmes related to artificial intelligence and cyber security in many universities, including the Air University, NUST, and the UET, while other universities would also get these programmes soon. He underlined the need for promoting skills education across the country, terming it more valued than simple educational degrees. He further said that skills education was playing important role in the development of the country.

Underscoring the biggest problem of awarding affiliation to colleges, the HEC chairman pointed out that universities had awarded affiliation to around 5,000 colleges so far across the country. "Such numbers of affiliations means compromising the quality of education," he added. "A policy has been formulated to properly monitor the performance of affiliated colleges through inspection," he said, adding that affiliation of the poor-performing colleges would be cancelled.

The HEC chairman said cooperation with international universities was increasing and a Japanese delegation was coming to Pakistan next month for cooperation in the IT sector. "Under MOUs with international universities, our students will study in the world’s top-ranked universities," he added. He further added that the HEC had a new department of global engagement, directly mandated for international collaboration to facilitate the students. “We have suggested the foreign countries to allow our institutions to open their campuses in their states,” he said.

Dr Ahmed pointed out that there were no modern institutions in far-flung areas of the country, and stressed the need for establishing such type of universities for the uplift of these areas. Highlighting key issues in the higher education sector, he said, "We can significantly improve our educational institutions ranking by improving the quality and management in educational institutions and discouraging politics and grouping.

Replying to a question, the HEC chairman said, “Plagiarism is a mindset and a kind of theft under which one steals the thoughts or writings of others and claims them as one's own. The HEC has worked out a mechanism for blacklisting the individuals involved in this wrong practice. Under the new policy, the fake complainant will also be blacklisted."

Published in The Express Tribune, September 26^th, 2022.