Author Topic: HEC not publishing annual reports since 2014  (Read 513 times)

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HEC not publishing annual reports since 2014
« on: September 25, 2017, 12:07:10 PM »
HEC not publishing annual reports since 2014
ISLAMABAD:September 25: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has not been publishing its annual reports since 2014, Daily Times has learnt.

The HEC has not published any annual performance reports for the past four years. Under HEC Ordinance 2002, it is mandatory to publish an annual performance report publically and submit it to the prime minister, who is the controlling authority of the HEC.

"The Commission shall, after the end of the every year, submit report to the controlling authority on the state of higher education and its activities during that year," reads the HEC Ordinance 2002.

An official, requesting anonymity, said that statistics regarding universities and the number of PhDs in the country were missing due to the non-availability of the report.

While explaining the failure, he said that after 2014, HEC had not updated the data about several categories, including full-time faculty members of the country's universities, degree awarding institutes (DAIs) and constituent colleges, summary for affiliated colleges and private candidates, year wise students enrollment in the universities, number of graduates having 16 years of education and above from university campuses and affiliated colleges, including distance learning (provisional), and the number of PhDs produced by Pakistani universities.

When Daily Times contacted the HEC media wing, they said: "The report is under preparation."

However, when asked about the year for which the report was being prepared, the HEC officials did not respond.

Moreover, since its inception in 2003, the HEC awarded 10,962 indigenous and foreign scholarships for PhD studies. However, as per available information, the commission has no proper record of the current employment status of these students who utilised billions of rupees from the national exchequer. An HEC official, requesting anonymity, said that it was the failure of the Human Resource Development (HRD) Division of the HEC, which was responsible to look after the affairs of the indigenous and overseas scholarship programme.

Another senior official of the HEC referred a World Economic Forum's Global Human Capital Report 2017 published last week which had ranked Pakistan as one of the worst countries for education and skills development.

According to the report, Pakistan is at the 125th spot out of a total of 130 countries in a list that ranks countries on the basis of how well they perform in the education and skills development and infrastructure.

The report provides a detailed assessment of the human capital of 130 countries. Human capital is defined as the knowledge and skills people possess that enable them to create value in the global economic system. The report recognises people's knowledge, talents, creativity, and skills and argues on the importance of building deep and diverse talent pools that would, in turn, contribute to a country's economy. But clearly, Pakistan is not nurturing or strengthening its human capital. The official said that government departments had failed to devise a comprehensive policy to improve educational standards at a par with global best educational practices. "Instead, the authorities just focused on making temporary policies just for point scoring," the official said.

Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) president Dr Kaleemullah said that HEC had failed to perform its functions or address issues facing the higher education sector in an effective way.

"The real issues in higher education sector are still unresolved, including appointment of capable academicians through a merit-based transparent mechanism, 75 percent tax rebate to researchers/faculty, extending faculty retirement age to 65 years, non-interference in universities internal matters and respecting autonomy of universities and devolution in higher education sector according to the spirit of the constitution," he said.
Published in Daily Times, September 25th 2017.
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