The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has categorically decided to withdraw the admissions of 14 academic programmes offered by Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi (PMAAUR) over lacking the prescribed criteria of the commission. The HEC is the body incharge of chalking out a policy and guidelines to over 180 public sector universities and degree awarding institutes apart from private sector universities across the country. The commission, according to the copy of notification, in a high level meeting held in HEC last week decided to ban 14 MPhil and PhD degree programmes as the university failed to follow the rules to run them. In a review, a nine-member Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) committee of HEC in February pointed out 43 academic programmes in the university which were not fulfilling the minimum criteria while some of them were halted and rest programmes were asked to stop further intakes. The HEC letter says that PMAAUR administration took admissions for the upcoming semester in 14 degree programmes, despite most of these courses being no longer available. “The university has offered further admissions in 14 of those MPhil, MS/equivalent programmes that have been either halted or further intake has been stopped, which is a matter of grave concern for the authorities at HEC. This violation of rules by the university will hamper the implementation of quality assurance guidelines,” reads the letter. It further stated that the university is advised to withdraw admissions in 14 programmes including MPhil Biochemistry, MPhil Biotechnology, BS (Hons) Agriculture Economics, MS Management Sciences, MBA, MSc (Hons) Entomology, MSc (Hons) Plant Pathology, MSc (Hons) Soil Sciences, MPhil Environmental Sciences, MPhil Forestry & Range Management, MPhil Wildlife Management, MS Zoology and MS Computer Sciences. “Non-compliance of above instructions by the university will leave no option with HEC but not to recognise the degrees awarded in these programmmes and to enforce the penalty of paying three times the fee received by the university from newly admitted students in these programmes,” the commission warned the PMAAUR. The available information stated that the QAA of HEC in February examined over a 100 academic programmes of MSc, MPhil and PhD in the university and it found that 43 programmes of MSc, MPhil and PhD lacked the set criteria of the commission. Out of total 69 assessed programmes, the HEC directed to halt 29 such academic programmes and further banned intakes of 14 programmes while only 26 of these were approved by the committee. The documents stated that after the move, the PMAAUR management sought some time from the HEC to rectify some of the pointed deficiencies. However, despite a lapse of over six months, the university did not complete its job and nor it provide some sort of documents requested by HEC authorities. “Arid university requested for a review of the highlighted programmes for which it was asked to provide the requisite data. However, the university failed to do so. As a result, review visit had to be cancelled,” stated the letter while mentioning the backdrop of the whole episode. Currently, the PMAAUR is running without a permanent vice chancellor. An official said non-presence of a permanent VC is one of the reasons for a weak administration, adding that some former VCs and Quality Enhancement Cell directors also created many new irregularities in the university Earlier, PMAAUR Pro VC Dr Sarwat N Mirza who has been assigned the position of interim VC had claimed that the university will fully comply with the rules set by the commission for universities. He also reaffirmed that the university will not offer admissions in objectionable programmes. However, the HEC recent directive proved the VC’s claims false. HEC Chairman Dr Tariq Banuri while talking exclusively to Daily Times said that to bound universities for maintaining minimum quality is the main function of the HEC. “We will make no compromise over the quality, merit and criteria,” he said, adding that violators would be penalised seriously under the law. Reply to a question, he commented that the punishment of paying three times the fee back to a student was announced so that the university should know better than to waste the student’s time. Published in Daily Times, September 27th 2018.