As per the HEC policy, a supervisor could take only five students for a PhD programme at a time but many faculty members have been found supervising more than 10 scholars. STOCK IMAGE
ISLAMABAD: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has barred around 19 universities, their sub-campuses and other institutes from carrying out postgraduate programmes after they failed to meet the commission’s set criteria.
HEC’s Quality Assurance Agency swooped on institutes offering MS, MPhil and PhD programmes from January 2014 till date, restraining them from continuing with the courses after they failed to respond to notices to improve and maintain the (pre-requisite) criteria, documents available with The Express Tribune show.
The HEC has so far shut 18 MPhil and six PhD programmes of several varsities, their sub-campuses and affiliated institutes for failing to meet the set criteria while restraining other institutes, which are currently offering eight MPhil and 31 PhD programmes, from giving further admissions without meeting the criteria.
Currently, 110 degree-awarding institutes across the country offer postgraduate or doctoral programmes, and according to the available documents, the HEC has so far reviewed 240 PhD and 40 MPhil programmes of 36 such institutes since January last year.
According to the documents, the 18 MPhil and six PhD programmes were shutdown after institutes failed to meet lab, faculty, infrastructure and other requirements as laid down by the HEC.
According to the HEC rules, a varsity should have at least two full-time PhD faculty members in a department offering MS, MPhil programmes and at least three full-time PhD faculty members to launch a PhD programme.
Closures
The HEC visiting teams found 19 universities, their sub-campuses and affiliated institutes violating the set rules with insufficient faculty, shoddy research work and poor infrastructure.
According to the documents and sources, the Institute of Social Policy and Research, Peshawar, was one such institute which had over 700 students enrolled for the MPhil programme. The institute has been functioning for the several years while claiming to be affiliated with the University of Peshawar.
The whole programme turned out to be phony when the institute applied for affiliation with Bacha Khan University, Charsadda. The latter wrote to the Sardheri Police Station to register an FIR against the institute as it had obtained the no-objection certificate from University of Peshawar on bogus documents. Later, the institute was closed down after the HEC intervened.
“We were surprised to see even many colleges offering postgraduate degrees sans the requisite facilities,” said an official who was part of the monitoring team.
As per the HEC policy, a supervisor could take only five students for a PhD programme at a time but many faculty members have been found supervising more than 10 scholars.
One such professor in Islamia University Bahawalpur was reportedly supervising more than 20 PhD students.
When contacted, the HEC spokesperson refused to discuss the issue terming it a ‘sensitive matter’. HEC Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmad, meanwhile, vowed to expedite crackdown on such institutes. He refused to share further details about the institutes which have been closed.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 21st, 2015.
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