LAHORE
Higher Education Commission Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed has said the HEC is strenuously working to promote higher education access in the country with its prime focus on quality of higher education. There is no compromise on the quality of education.
The Vision 2025, a detail plan and strategy for better education system in Pakistan, has been prepared. Knowledge is being updated on daily bases instead of weekly bases, he expressed during his visit to Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry on Sunday.
Dr Mukhtar Ahmed appreciated FPCCI suggestions and briefed the house about the HEC reforms since 2002 and said the number of universities had been improved to 180 which were only 59 in 2002. The higher education sector expanded rapidly after the early 2001-2002 and had been increasing exponentially ever since. During the same period, the access ratio has also shown improvement from 2.6 percent to 9 percent, the enrolment in higher education programmes has shown positive improvement, including a large proportion of women. He said out of 48,000, only 11,800 faculty members are PhD degree holders. The level of research has been improved, 800 papers were published in 2002, which reached 12,000 this year and research papers of Pakistani intuitions are highly credible and being cited by various economist and scholars.
Talking about HEC Vision 2025, Dr Mukhtar said it was a plan where requirements/responsibilities of HEIs were identified to meet human resources requirements for boosting knowledge economy of Pakistan. He said they were always there to facilitate industry and academia for the growth of business sector though the reforms required in the education system of Pakistan could not be done by the government alone, public-private participation and a mix of formal as well as non-formal education can pull out majority of country’s population toward productive human asset.
Manzoor-ul-Haq Malik, Regional Chairman and Vice-President FPCCI said higher education was very important for a knowledge economy. Pakistan’s higher education system needs to be re-engineered effectively to perform better according to global standards.
Appreciating the funding in research projects and laboratories, the FPCCI chairman said research is very important aspect for the growth of economy, sector-wise and district-wise research should be focused with substantial efforts for identifying the priority research areas. Foreign scholarship should be given on merit while PhD programme should be encouraged.
PhDs: Punjab University (PU) has awarded PhDs to four scholars. Asim Hameed Butt, son of Waheed Ahmad Butt has been awarded a PhD in South Asian Studies after approval of his thesis entitled “US-China Power Struggle in South Asia (A Post 9/11 Geo-Strategic Analysis in Indo-Pak Perspective)”, Huma Gul, daughter of Fayyaz Ahmad, in Persian after approval of her thesis entitled “A Comparative Study of the Poetry of Forough Farrokhzad & Parveen Shakir”, Shaukat Hayat, s/o Ghulam Sarwar, in Persian after approval of his thesis entitled “A Comparative Study of Sultan Bahu’s Poetry and the Works of Five Persian Poets (Nezami, Rumi, Sa’adi, Hafeez, Jami)” and Mehreen Ijaz, d/o Ch Ijaz Ahmad, in Home Economics after approval of her thesis entitled “Performance Criteria of Chemical Protective Clothing”.
