Daily Times

A debate is being bandied about on the functional future of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) at the Centre vis-à-vis that in the provinces. It is pertinent to view the debate in light of certain facts. For instance, the 18th Constitutional Amendment, 2010, brought about several changes to the Constitution of Pakistan.
The 18th Amendment bifurcated subjects mentioned in entry number 38, which had existed in the concurrent legislative list in this way: “Curriculum, syllabus, planning, policy, centres of excellence and standards of education.” After the abolition of the concurrent list, the amendment made “standards of education” part of the Federal Legislative List (FLL) II at entry number 12 in this way: “Standards in institutions for higher education and research, scientific and technical institutions”. The FLL-II falls under the purview of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) which, as per Article 53, has equal representation of all the provinces. In this way, the 18th Amendment empowered the CCI to formulate and harmonise standards in higher education in the country. At the same time, by not reproducing the rest of the subjects in the FLL-I and II, the Amendment devolved the subjects of curriculum, syllabus, planning, policy and centres of excellence to the provinces. In this way, the 18th Amendment empowered the provinces to provide financial, technical and logistic resources to the higher education institutions working in their domains.
On May 4, 2010, under clause nine of Article 270 AA of the Constitution, the then Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan constituted the Implementation Commission (IC) and made Mian Raza Rabbani its chairman and Muhammad Ishaq Dar its deputy chairman, besides seven other members. Regarding the functions of the federal HEC, in the context of entry number 12, the IC made eight proposals: first, cause evaluation of the performance of institutions; second, prescribe conditions under which institutions (local or foreign) may be opened or operated; third, set up or authorise any existing national or regional evaluation councils to do accreditation of institutions, faculties and disciplines by awarding them appropriate ratings; fourth, set up or authorise any existing body to be a testing body; fifth, determine the equivalence and recognition of degrees, etc, of higher education awarded by institutions within the country or abroad; sixth, develop guidelines for evaluation of the performance of both faculty members and institutions; seventh, collect and publish information and statistics on higher education and institutions, and, eighth, perform similar functions that “may be prescribed or as may be incidental or consequential to the discharging of the aforesaid functions.” These eight proposals clearly delineated the functional boundaries of the post-18th Amendment federal HEC.
On April 12, 2011, the Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan passed orders and allowed the federal HEC to function and perform duties under its HEC Ordinance 2002 until fresh legislation by both provinces and the Centre would be promulgated to take on new constitutional responsibilities. The SC did not make it conditional who would lead whom. Consequently, the Sindh Assembly enacted its legislation, the Sindh Higher Education Commission Act, 2013, on the subjects (curriculum, syllabus, planning, policy and centres of excellence) devolved to it. The Punjab Assembly also followed suit in 2014. With the enactment of the respective HEC Acts, both the provinces of Sindh and Punjab have now been demanding the transfer of relevant administrative and financial assets (or shares) to them as early as possible. Both the provinces require that for the next financial year, all the funds related to higher education be made available to them because the funding of provincial universities is the responsibility of the provincial governments, which already have administrative control over these universities. Though the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan are lagging behind in making necessary legislation to materialise the concept of provincial autonomy in the domain of higher education, the federal HEC is still reluctant to withdraw from the provincial domain.
There have appeared two problems. First, in May 2011, the CCI meeting decided that the federal government would keep on funding provincial universities till the eighth NFC Award, which is due in 2015. The federal government, it appears, is taking refuge behind this CCI decision, which is now losing its importance in the face of the will of the provinces to take their matters in their own hands, as shown by the provinces of Sindh and Punjab by enacting their respective higher education Acts. The provinces seem in no mood to wait for the next NFC Award as provincial legislation on higher education is not subject to any NFC Award. Nevertheless, the eighth NFC Award will also be important to explicate the policy of the federal government on how to run the affairs of the universities existing in the capital, Islamabad. Secondly, the federal government is dilly dallying in fulfilling its part of the constitutional obligation; neither is it passing a new HEC Ordinance nor is it enacting an Act to redefine the functional responsibilities of the federal HEC necessary in the post-18th Amendment scenario. The federation has also not given a timeline to make the next NFC Award possible. Consequently, there has appeared a rift between the federal HEC and the newly constituted provincial HECs.
There is a need on the part of the federal government to pass legislation on “standards in institutions for higher education and research, scientific and technical institutes” so that the standards of research are set, overseen and maintained by the federal HEC and in no case lowered by the provinces over time. Secondly, one of the demands of the provinces is that the new role of the federal HEC should be defined through an Act of parliament and not through a presidential Ordinance. The provinces think that the federation is still looking to retain the provincial subjects of planning and policy in higher education against the spirit and dictate of the 18th Constitutional Amendment.

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at qaisarrashid@yahoo.com