ISLAMABAD: The International Islamic University (IIU) Islamabad disseminated a vague message while announcing the placement of its Quality Enhancement Cell (QEC) in the W category by the Higher Education Commission (HEC).
In the statement issued by the university, it was said: “The IIU is placed in W category by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) of HEC”. It did not make it clear whether the university has been put in the best category or in its QEC.
Sources in the university said that by issuing such vague statements, the university management tried to hide the ever decreasing academic quality standard of the university.
The officials who were well informed with the ever decreasing quality standard of the university said that the ranking by the HEC was no longer concerned with the overall quality of the university. Instead, they said, the ranking was just declaring the Quality Enhancement Cell (QEC) of the university.
To examine the QEC of the universities, the HEC declared a specific form of parameters.
When the HEC was approached through an email for exact acknowledgement of the matter, it rejected the university’s claims.
The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) of the Commission said that the agency only assesses the implementation status of the IQA mechanism. This activity is the rating of the performance of Quality Enhancement Cells against certain parameters that are mainly focused on Program level Self-Assessment.
“The IIU obtained ‘W’ category for implementing the IQA mechanism, against specified parameters during the time period of July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016”, it added. The HEC further said that the QECs (in the universities) were in the initial stages and quality improvement was an ongoing process. The commission initially limited the scoring scope of the QECs to encourage them to adopt the quality parameters; but with the passage of time the criteria were getting stringent. Similarly, the scoring parameters for the next fiscal year will be changed while incorporating other important parameters in the performance assessment, it said.
When asked what kind of action would be taken by the HEC on misinforming the public, it said “QAA-HEC just got to know about this misinformation and the university will be inquired about this”.
In a letter, the HEC in August last year pointed out many deficiencies in the IIU, the Commission pointed out that no full time Director QEC had been appointed.
Beside the criticism on the temporary Director QEC of the IIU, the HEC found many other irregularities in the varsity including acute shortage of senior faculty members, most of the sanctioned posts of Associate Professors and Professors were vacant, PhD programmes were being run without fulfilling the desired criteria and many other deficiencies.
Moreover, the HEC in the recently compiled report recommended to halt the academic activities of many departments till the fulfillment of desired standards.
On the other hand, the IIU very proudly said that the HEC had appreciated the efforts of the QEC of the university.
A faculty member said that if the university’s QEC was so idealistic, then why the existence of several loopholes in its many academic departments.
When contacted, the Rector IIU, Masoom Yasinzai was not available to comment. However, spokesperson Syed Hassan Aftab said: “The QEC is not solely responsible for quality enhancement rather it was a facilitation organ for the promotion of the academic quality of any institute. Academic bodies like academic council BASAR and other such academic institutions also played a pivotal role.”