Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Despite the passage of over 14 years since its inception, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan could not collect data of students obtaining their higher educational studies abroad on self-finance, Daily Times has learnt.

The HEC has over Rs 90 billion annual budgetary allocation and responsibility to oversee all academic and financial affairs of over 180 public sector universities in different parts of the country. The commission, sources said, lacks coordination with foreign embassies in Islamabad due to which it has been unable to gather data of PhD scholars who moved abroad for their studies.

According to the HEC Act 2002, formulation of policies, guiding principles and priorities for higher education institutions for promotion of socio-economic development of the country for evaluation, improvement and promotion of higher education, research and development was among the major functions of the commission.

The HEC official said that to devise policies without acquiring data of Pakistani foreign PhD scholars is not possible, adding that authorities should accumulate the data these scholars from respective embassies in Islamabad.

“For instance, the commission should formulate a comprehensive policy to give some special sort of incentives to foreign scholars so that they could serve in different universities of the country,” he said, adding that the country has a severe shortage of PhD scholars. Through this way, he added, maximum foreign scholars could be taken to serve in own country to fill the gap. “But data of such scholars is most fundamental for making any such kind of strategy,” he suggested.

Besides, the official maintained, many other kind of strategies could be prepared in this regard. “To have statistics is the main requirement while it’s very unfortunate that each government as well as top administration remain unsuccessful to do this task,” he regretted.

The HEC senior management on many occasions confessed that even today there is a huge shortage of PhD scholars in the country.

The HEC Chairperson Dr Mukhtar Ahmed said that there is a shortage of 38,000 PhDs. According to the official, information provided by HEC media wing, it has been observed that since 1947, the HEC has produced a total of 14,400 PhDs divided as 646 in agriculture and veterinary sciences, 1,794 in arts and humanities, 3,277 in biological & medical sciences, 334 in business education, 662 engineering & technology, 3,237 in physical sciences, 3,320 in social sciences and 130 in honorary.

Interestingly, the provided statistics contradict with HEC’s own figures. It seems that HEC’s Human Resource Development wing, which mainly deals with such matters, is confused in this regard as last year in an email, the HEC claimed that there are a total of 2,320 PhDs in the country.

Moreover, the sources revealed that the actual number of existing PhDs in the country is too less than the provided strength.

Furthermore, according to a report, the commission doesn’t even have record of employment status of its own funded indigenous and foreign scholarships for PhD interns.

Besides this, sources revealed that the HEC also could not update its PhDs directory which are main sources to determine the total number of scholars.

An official in the HEC, wishing not to be named, said that one can tell the priorities as well as the capabilities of the authorities concerned.

“The HEC has tightened its grip over the universities in the last few years to ensure quality and standards of education,” he recalled, adding that the commission has shutdown many academic programmes and universities due to a lack of required criteria, however it has to do much more to develop the higher education sector.

Published in Daily Times, March 19^th 2018.