Make sure the degree is recognised before applying to engineering university, comes council warning

If it isn’t, the graduate is not officially an engineer.

KARACHI: The Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) has issued an advisory warning for students and parents to ensure that when they are applying for engineering degree programmes they should check they are recognised. If the institution is not accredited, then the council will not recognise the graduates as engineers.

PEC’s consultant at its Karachi branch, engineer Ghulam Rasool Bhatti, warned that some institutions offered engineering programmes without proper accreditation.

The council

The PEC is administered by a 65-member governing body of professional engineers with a minimum experience of 20 years. It works under an act which was introduced in parliament in 1976. Its aim is to safeguard and regulate engineers as a formal body, which was approved by then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The procedure

Bhatti explained that, say if for example, NED University of Engineering and Technology decided to introduce a new engineering discipline then it would have to inform the PEC before starting the programme.  The council’s inspection team will then visit NED to determine if the institution met the set benchmarks to introduce such a programme. The council would then give it the go-ahead or refuse to acknowledge the programme.

But even accreditation runs out. It is granted for a maximum of three years and a minimum of one year for new programmes. After it expires, a PEC inspection teams would make another visit to check if quality is up to the mark. This ensures continuous checks and balances.

Bhatti believes that universities which are not accredited by the PEC are playing with the future of their students. “Once the students are enrolled in an unaccredited programme, the council reserves the right to refuse them membership [as engineers], which is [essential] if they want to get jobs in Pakistan or abroad.”

Ground reality

But according to the registrar of NED University, Javed Aziz Khan, matters are not as simple. “The council has its own stand on the matter and engineering universities have their own,” he said.

Khan said that public universities did not have enough funds to buy all the necessary equipment before starting a programme. During the first couple of years, engineering students usually study general courses which do not require specialised equipment. “But by the time the first batch reaches its third year, a university has to have all the equipment,” said Khan.

A student at NED University, Usama Murtaza, said that although many universities in Pakistan did win PEC accreditation for core engineering programmes they ran other unrecognised programmes simultaneously as well. “Hence, the students are duped into taking admission in unaccredited programmes and their futures are undecided till they reached final year.”

Unregistered engineers will not get government jobs but they can work as private consultants and contractors although they are paid less. Consultants and contractors also have to register with the council and follow its rules while hiring people. When the firms register, they have to give the details of everyone working for them.

KU accreditation

Even Karachi University did not win the mandatory PEC approval when it began its undergraduate chemical engineering in 2007. The first batch of students who graduated in 2010 was recognised but only after they protested for three years, according to one graduate, Muhammad Taimurul Haq.

But the batches in subsequent years have not been recognised yet either. Haq said that the PEC only recognised the first batch of students. But since the university has not met PEC’s requirements, the council gave no response after its inspection team visited the department this year.

At present, around 19 engineering universities and other institutions in Sindh have received accreditation from the council for running a number of engineering programmes. While in rest of the country, around 71 universities and institutions have obtained approval for running various engineering disciplines.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 16^th, 2012.