Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has undertaken a number of initiatives for continuous improvement of quality of higher education in accordance with the global standards, a report said on Sunday.

According to the sources, HEC revamped post-secondary education in order to improve the educational standards at the graduate level.

Talking to APP, multiple sources said that the commission had also established National Academy for Higher Education with an aim to design and delivering generic and need-based capacity building and training programmes in teaching and research for faculty.

It would also focus on academic governance and leadership for faculty and management, they added.

“HEC also revamp Education Testing Council (ETC) under which the entry tests are standardized for public and private universities of Pakistan. The aim of the constitution of ETC is to hold uniform, accessible and competitive assessment bases for admissions to universities. The test under ETC will be free of cost for the students” they added.

The HEC has revamped of National Research Framework for the promotion of academic as well as applied research culture in the higher education institutions, to address the significant societal issues and boost international compatible research for a sustainable and progressive research ecosystem in the country, the sources added.

They said that academic research was a key element for the higher education sector’s growth, knowledge creation and building strategic partnerships.

The Research Grant Framework an initiative of HEC offers research grants to creative researchers to assist them in research pursuits. The funds were included Grand Challenge Fund (GCF), Local Challenge Fund (LCF), Technology Transfer Support Fund (TTSF), Innovative & Collaborative Research Grant (ICRG), National Research Programme for Universities (NRPU) and Technology Development Fund.

HEC was also preparing guidelines for a major fundraising drive for universities, which was culminated in 2019, they added.

Under the drive, the universities set a target of mobilizing 20 percent of their revenue from non-government and non-tuition sources by 2020.

The Higher Education Management Information System has been also established with the purpose to automate all the manual processes and business of the department for high information among sections/offices of the department and hence for timely decision making by the administration.