Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The top educational monitoring body known as the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has failed to achieve its own planned targets under the Medium Term Development Framework-II (MTDF) 2010-15, Daily Times learnt reliably.

The documents obtained by this correspondent reveal that the HEC in 2010 had devised a MTDF in which the commission planed to achieve some certain sort of goals. Inclusion of the five country’s universities in the top 500 universities list in the world ranked by Times Higher Education, was t he most important point in the plan chart.

Times Higher Education Agency conducts global ranking in the higher education sector. Very interestingly, according to the chairperson Higher Education Commission (HEC), Dr.Mukhtar Ahmed, the commission follows the criteria of QS ranking agency while in the MTDF it referred the name of Times Higher Education agency.

Thus the HEC could not covert this goal into a practical reality. In last many years no Pakistani university could make a place in the list of top 500 universities in the world.

According to the Times Higher Education, the ratio of public access to higher education among the age group 17-23 is just 10 per cent. Moreover, according to the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report 2015-16 , under the heads of higher education and training, Pakistan’s ranking is way down at 124th out of 140 countries as compared to India at 90th, Bangladesh 122nd, Nepal 113rd, China 28th, Iran 69th, Bhutan 103rd, Qatar 27th, UAE 37th and Saudi Arabia 49th.

As per the QS higher education system strength rankings 2016, the Pakistani higher education system had been ranked at the bottom with 9.2 score as compared to some other countries.

The devised chart of MTDF 2010-15 states that “the 125 academic programmes are to be offered jointly with premier foreign universities”. Whereas according to the highly informed sources in the HEC, so for not a single academic programme could be offered with prime foreign varsities.

It is pertinent to mentioned here that COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) had launched such a programme with Lancaster University in UK. That has been closed over some certain sort of qualitative objections. As per details, over 2000 students were enrolled in this dual degree programme. Beside above, the ‘Faculty Development’ and ‘Quality Assurance’ programmes, the HEC prepared a ‘Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurial programme as well. Under this portion of MTD, the commission set a goal of 30 joint university industry projects in the country.

However, the available affirmation reveals that the monitoring body also could not practicalise this sort of achievement.

Establish of 60 technology incubators and five technology parks were also a part of ‘Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurial burner MTDF. This exercise remained just in the official papers of the HEC. Only one “technology park” was established in NUST. The other one was established in the CIIT and the HEC itself closed it down a few years ago for unknown reasons.

Furthermore the establishment of 60 technology incubators was also part of the strategy while HEC so for failed to achieve this goal.

Chairperson DrAhmed says that it is time taking process. “We are gradually achieving these targets.” When asked about the universities ranking targets, Dr Ahmed claimed that “we come in top 700 and soon we will be part of top 500 too”.

Spokesperson Aayesh Ikram said that Pakistani varsities were visible in the Asian world rankings list. On number of publications target, she added “Publication of research papers was targeted at 12,500 but Scopus data reflects the number at 12000 which includes web based ISI journals with impact factor”. Ikram did not reply for query regarding the failure in establishment of the 60 technology incubator. However, she said over 225 companies have been incubated by HEC in various universities that have generated around Rs 480m in annual revenue and have generated 940 direct employment opportunities. “Against the target five technology parks, the approved projects met difficulties as funding flows faced depletion in 2009-13”, she claimed.