HEC chief indicts provinces over illegal varsities

Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmad has said that provinces were compromising the quality of education by allowing private universities to thrive without meeting the set criteria and legal formalities.

Talking to the media here, he said that by establishing these new institutions, the provinces were not only failing to fulfil the council formalities but also compromising the regulations set by the HEC for the establishment of new universities.

Sources said that illegal universities and their sub-campuses continue to grow across the country following the devolution of education and the establishment of provincial higher education bodies.

The sources said that the practice of teaching unauthorised programmes and the illegal up gradation of colleges to universities and their sub-campuses has reached its peak in the country in the last few years. According to the sources, in a short span, various provincial assemblies have approved charters of over 15 new private universities.

“Today, the higher education sector has a lower budget than in 2017-18. At a time, when large public sector universities are facing salary shortages, the provincial governments are also failing to provide financial grants to the institutions approved by them,” the HEC chief said.

According to him, “currently only one per cent of the total GDP is allocated for the education sector, therefore, in such situation, the federal government cannot ensure the supply of funds to provincial chartered universities”. “There are some universities in the provinces whose records are not available even with HEC and Baba Gurunanak University is also one of them,” he added.

Dr Mukhtar reiterated his commitment to taking stringent measures for improving the quality of education in universities while taking all stakeholders on board.

He said that since the establishment of the HEC, “we have achieved many goals while many challenges are ahead to do more for the higher education sector of Pakistan”. He said that all relevant stakeholders had been taken on board to review the previous performance and deficiencies in HEC policies. Talking about quality education, he said that "we will set the HEC direction and would formulate policies that would work for our future generations." Dr Mukhtar vowed to set goals for the HEC that would be achieved by 2050.

The frustrating step for HEC all along has been the establishment of sub-campuses by public-sector and private universities without getting a no-objection certificate.

Under the rules, a NOC from HEC is required to establish a degree-awarding institute. Upon receiving the request, HEC sends a team to the campus to check whether the institute fulfills criteria vis-à-vis faculty, laboratories and other requirements.

According to sources, the HEC has been issuing public notices in the newspapers, warning parents and students against taking admission at unapproved varsities but a number of institutes are flouting rules and churning out ‘graduates’ without the HEC’s approval.

According to the sources, most of the unapproved campuses are situated in Sindh, especially in Karachi and Punjab. A few illegal campuses are also functioning in the federal capital. “Punjab and Khyber-Paktunkhwa governments have shown keen interest in taking action against such HEIs, while Sindh and Balochistan have taken no action,” the sources said.

Meanwhile, during an interactive session of Afghan students studying in Pakistan under Allama Muhammad Iqbal Scholarships, Dr Mukhtar Ahmed highlighted the importance of hard work and encouraged them to complete their education and serve Afghanistan.

He acknowledged the issues students were facing and said that “HEC’s doors are always open for you, not just today but even after you graduate as you will be our alumni.”

As many as 40 students representing a total of 3,000 Afghan students currently studying in Pakistan attended the session to share their experiences and discuss the issues they were facing on the academic front.

Terming the students as the future of Pak-Afghan ties, the HEC chairman said: “We appreciate the commitment and resilience of the Afghan nation in the face of adverse circumstances, and we hope that the Afghan youth will play the role of change agents in the society.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2022.