Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) is implementing Higher Education Development in Pakistan (HEDP) project under the agreement between World Bank and Government of Pakistan. The Component-2 of HEDP aims to improve the quality of teaching & learning in affiliated colleges and Postsecondary Education Reform Unit (PERU) was established by HEC to undertake the activities under this Component.

NUMS was invited by HEC with other 30+ selected universities, for an online consultative meeting for establishing QECAC units (QECs in Affiliated Colleges) on Sep 27, 2023, for NUMS has been identified for the establishment of QECACs units in its affiliated institutions for improving the quality of education being provided in affiliated colleges. Dy Director QA Dr Erum Monis represented NUMS on the invitation from HEC.

Mr. Muhammad Afzal, Consultant Capacity Building HEC, opened the session and welcomed all the participants. Prof Dr Mahmood Ul Hassan Butt, Project Coordinator (PC) HEDP-HEC, gave a brief introduction of the HEDP project (Affiliated Colleges/Institutes) and its impact on higher education in Pakistan. He explained that with around 226 universities of Pakistan, more than 4000 Affiliated Colleges/Institutes are affiliated but there is no mechanism to check quality of teaching in them. Therefore, HEDP has launched this project with the HEC’s Quality Assurance Agency(QAA) to reach out to the universities for implementation of this project. Dr Nasir Shah, Director General QAA HEC also briefed the participants on the new Quality Assurance (QA) Framework for HEIs of Pakistan (developed by QAA-HEC) and its focus on Affiliated Colleges / Institutions to bring the affiliated colleges/institutes in the quality net of HEC.

Mr Nasir Shah also highlighted the challenges for the affiliated colleges especially in public universities under provincial governments. He added that affiliated colleges are weaker links of the chain. Hence HEC has introduced ‘revised guidelines’ for affiliation of institutes and colleges in which, establishing of QECAC is mandatory in all affiliates of the HEIs. It was emphasized that affiliated institutes/colleges must be established and maintained on the same standards as the university. Following points of the session are worth mentioning:

a.       Appointment of focal person for QECAC (LQEC) under main QA/QEC Dte in the HEIs

b.       Upgrading of teaching standards (same as in university)

c.      The HEC’s Evaluation process should be followed at QECs and QEC ACs of the HEI

The main purpose of QECAC will be to bring the educational standards of affiliated colleges at par with the affiliating university in order to produce all rounded and skillful graduates so that they can apply their knowledge and acquired competencies to address societal problems.

Under this project HEC will provide funds for establishing QECAC units in affiliated colleges and seek funds utilization reports annually from affiliates. To build the capacity of all QECs, HEC will step wise engage all universities in training sessions on the subject of establishing their QECAC units.

The participants shared their views on the subject and ensured their full cooperation in implementing the National Project aimed at continuous quality improvement in higher education.

Meeting ended with a note of thanks by the Consultant Capacity Building HEC, Mr Muhammad Afzal, to all the participants for attending this meeting.

 A session on YPR expectations and Implementation was arranged by Higher Education Commission (HEC) online on July 20, 2023. The aim of the session was to discuss all the tools to be filled for the academic session 2022-23. The session was led by Mr. Shoaib Irshad, Deputy Director QAA, HEC, Islamabad

The HEC plays a vital role in overseeing and regulating Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Pakistan. As part of its commitment to ensuring academic quality and accountability, HEC has established guidelines and expectations for universities to submit yearly progress reports. These reports serve as a means of evaluating the overall performance, development, and compliance of universities with national educational standards. The relevant document provided by HEC outlines the yearly progress report expectations and implementation guidelines set forth by HEC for the universities as per following areas.

• Institutional Overview
• Academic Programs
• Research and Innovation
• Quality Assurance
• Student Support Services
• Community Engagement

HEC expects universities to submit their yearly progress reports by a predetermined deadline each year. The deadline for this year was announced to be August 15, 2023. In the training checklist for filling YPR and templates were shared with QEC representatives. NUMS QA Representatives led by Consultant QA, Air Cdre Muhammad Ismail, (Retd), Deputy Director QA, Dr. Erum Monis, and other team members attended the meeting for strict compliance of HEC requirements.

 Online sessions on revised HEC Graduate Policy 2023 are being organized by Quality Assurance Division (QAD), Higher Education Commission (HEC) region wise. On August 30, 2023, NUMS was invited by the HEC’s (QAD) to join the first information session. It was attended by Quality Assurance, Academics, Deans/HoDs and faculty members of NUMS on QA’s invitation. Presentation delivered by HEC was shared by QA Dte with all relevant staff at NUMS as well for future reference.

The focus of the session was the revised graduate education policy (GEP) – 2023, its key aspects, its significance and comparison with previous graduate education policies of HEC. The speaker Dr. Abaidullah Anwar, policy expert from HEC, explained how implementing this revised policy can help universities achieve academic excellence.

GEP-2023 encompasses all the minimum standards and guidelines to impact Level 7 and 8 qualifications, with a special emphasis on governance of the doctoral research system in HEIs and quality assurance. Accordingly, the revised policy, while addressing the concerns of the stakeholders regarding admission and Credit Hours requirements, also embarks on various aspects of quality dissertation along with research ethics, the roles and responsibilities of research supervisors and supervisees, and the conditions regulating their relationship and the handling of grievances.

Further, the new policy, while approaching university autonomy within the ambit of their charters/acts, seeks to strike the right balance between autonomy and regulatory constraints. Hence, the requirement of obtaining NOC for the launch of a new graduate program has been relaxed for the top HEIs, ranked through system as may be prescribed, while the lower ranked HEIs must seek HEC’s NOC. However, these HEIs can exercise their autonomy in determining faculty relevance at their end by adopting the mechanism prescribed in the policy. Lastly, this policy also suggests retributive actions for the HEIs violating the provisions that it prescribes.

Overall, the policy has three parts:

1. Minimum Standards and Guidelines for launching a Program and awarding degrees
2. Governance of Doctoral Research System, and
3. Quality Assurance

The guiding principles of the policy are as follows:

1. University Autonomy: Within the ambit of their Charter / Act and HEC’s policies
2. Access: All qualified individuals with equal opportunity
3. Relevance: Local needs and national policies
4. Alignment: The outcomes defined in National Qualification Framework and graduate Education Policy
5. Contextualizing: Without compromising over the global standards
6. Academic Freedom: Thoughts and conceiving ideas
7. Originality: Thoughts leading to innovation by adhering to academic ethics.
8. Academic Flexibility: Conducting research activities without violating disciplinary guidelines
9. Collaboration, Networking and Partnerships: At the local, national and international levels for the development and execution of graduate programs
10. Quality: Promoting high standards of academic and research excellence and student success

 Higher Education Data Repository (HEDR) division has devised a ranking proforma 2023, based on approved university ranking criteria, for collecting data from HEIs. The HEC National University Ranking-2023 would be based on the data of 2020-21 (1st July 2020 to 30th June 2021). The universities which have completed at least 5 years on June 30, 2021, from their date of grant of NOC, are eligible to participate in Rankings-2023

Higher Education Commission, Pakistan, invited 124 universities, earlier this year to provide feedback on university ranking criteria. The university ranking criteria has now been finalized keeping in view the feedback received from Higher Education Institutes (HEIs), national and international experts.

To enable universities to feed accurate ranking data into HEC’s HEDR Portal, it was considered indispensable to train nominated focal persons, in order to complete the uphill task. Consequently, a training session was arranged by HEC on July 19, 2023 in the smart Room of HRD building.  Dr Erum Monis, Deputy Director, Quality Assurance and Ms Tabish Rehman, Assistant Director Registration Dept were nominated as focal persons to attend the training session.

Following are the salient points of the training: -

a. Once the HEDR portal is opened for ranking process, by the end of August 2023, the assigned focal persons will submit data of the Fiscal year 2020-21, on the portal, with the approval of the Vice Chancellor, only.

b.  The ranking proforma- 2023 can be accessed via link: www.hec.gov.pk/statistiss

c.  The HEC ranking uses five criteria, all of which have specific weightings and are summed to give an aggregate score out of 100. Institutional rankings are determined based on this aggregate score. Each criterion and its weighting is dependent upon a set of sub-components. The five criteria and sub-components are summarized below:

1. Quality Assurance
2. Teaching and Learning Environment
3. Research
4. Finance and Facilities
5. Social Integration and Community Development

d.  Participants of the Training were given hands-on practice for data collection, retrieval from own databases of HEIs and attachments of required evidences on the online portal directly.

Chairman HEC Mr Mukhtar Ahmed visited the training venue and motivated the HEI focal persons to take this activity as an opportunity for self-reflection, correction and continuous quality improvement.

 The Higher Education Commission(HEC) has conducted a series of productive and interactive orientation sessions from March 30 to April 14, 2023 with the designated focal persons of Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) and Quality Enhancement Cells (QECs) of Universities from all over Pakistan to update Higher Education Data Repository (HEDR), Pakistan Qualification Register (PQR) and PhD Country Directory (PCD).

Deadline for submission of corrected data was April 15, 2023. Separate training sessions through Microsoft Teams, were conducted with relevant focal persons. These sessions were inaugurated by the Director General HEDR Mr. Ghulam Nabi who appreciated the participation from almost all Pakistan Universities. In order to motivate focal persons to complete uphill tasks, he announced an appreciation scheme for the first 20 universities which had submitted their data on time.

Abdullah Fayyaz Chattha, Director IT Division, HEC and lead coordinator HEDR, provided orientation on the PQR system, and it was noted that manual entry in the Excel sheet Proforma would not be accepted. Therefore, the universities need to follow the guidelines in the hands-on tutorial guide.

The HEDR in charge also informed that the focal persons could access the system independently and fill in the Proforma. The participants were encouraged to share their queries through the HEDR collaboration room to receive the answers. Overall, the sessions were well-organized and informative. He said providing a license to nominated participants was a good initiative which would enable them access the system whenever needed.

Ms Tabish Rehman, Assistant Director, Registration is focal person for HES from NUMS, while Mr Tahir Altaf, Deputy Controller, Examinations, is looking after the PCD.

 NUMS Focal Person for PQR for six years, Dr Erum Monis, Deputy Director Quality Assurance attended all relevant sessions online and contributed by sharing valuable suggestions with HEDR Teams to update the system and help new PQR focal persons of new universities.

A seminar on the “Role of University in achieving Quality Based Ranking" was organized by Directorate of Quality Enhancement Pir Mehr Ali Shah(PMAS) Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi on February 15, 2023 while NUMS was represented by Consultant Quality Assurance, Air Cdre Muhammad Ismail, SI (M), (Retd) and Deputy Director Quality Assurance, Dr Erum Monis.

Quality-based rankings are designed to evaluate and rank universities based on various criteria, such as research output, teaching quality, internationalization, and reputation.  Prof. Dr. Qamar-Uz-Zaman Vice Chancellor PMAS-Arid Agriculture University was the chief guest on the occasion.

Dr. Farrukh Idrees Director QEC, National Defense University, Islamabad was the keynote speaker at the seminar. He gave a presentation on ranking methodology of Times Higher Education, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World Universities Rankings, QS Asia Rankings, Universitas Indonesia (UI) Green Metric World University Ranking and Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. He elaborated the role of Institutional Performance Evaluation and Postgraduate Program Review in improving the quality of education and research.

The Higher Education Commission, Pakistan has been systematically implementing the agenda for reforms outlined in the HEC Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF) which has identified Access, Quality and Relevance as the key areas in this regard.

To address these challenges, a comprehensive strategy was outlined that identified the core strategic aims for reform as i) Faculty Development, ii) Improving Access, iii) Excellence in Learning and Research, and iv) Relevance to National Priorities.

In order to improve the performance of Higher Education Institutes(HEIs), HEC started with primary step of outlining the Performance Evaluation Standards for the HEIs to be used for the purpose.

A total of eleven standards are defined in the Institutional Performance Evaluation(IPE) Manual and all the eleven standards are equally important to be met by the HEIs to achieve the desired certification to quality provision in higher education, international visibility and significant place in the regional and international rankings of the HEIs.

The Institute of Human Skill Development (IHSD), Lahore, was developed to enhance human skills in diversified fields/areas which was working to achieve its mission for the last five years. 

In this connection, IHSD organized a one day in-person workshop titled ‘Institutional Performance Evaluation, Efficiency and Effectiveness of Dimensional Model for Higher Education Institutions’

The main purpose of the workshop was to share good practices with QEC colleagues across Pakistan. The session, led by Mr Ali Raza of Lahore Garrison University (LGU), was held in Lahore on Jan 28, 2023. A discussion was built around the topic of reporting against the IPE Standards, and its effectiveness. Members from eleven universities across the country attended the session and shared challenges faced and discussed the best possible solutions to accomplish desired quality goals set by their University in line with their vision and mission. After exhaustive debate on what is possible to accomplish and what is not, all representatives of the universities agreed to work together, learn from each other’s best practices which were shared during the session in order to ensure smooth completion of the IPE for the submission to HEC and for Continual Quality Improvement (CQI).

Dr Erum Monis, Deputy Director Quality Assurance, represented NUMS and shared with the audience her experience of successfully conducting 01 HEC led IPE and 05 Internal IPE visits.

Certificates of participation were awarded to the attendees of the session at the end and participants dispersed to follow HEC guidelines and strive to ensure that all Quality measures are taken to make their Institutions best models of Higher Education Learning and Research.

Pakistan’s future faces many hurdles, and its progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been struggling. It has only been recently realized that inclusion of Higher Education sector is pivotal in achieving the SDGs. A comprehensive webinar was held at the Govt College Women University, Faisalabad on November 10, 2022 which was attended by Dy Director Quality Assurance Dr Erum Monis and Mr Aqib Shafiq, Asst Manager Jr from NUMS. Dr. Muhammad Haroon Khan, Associate Professor Health Sciences and Director ORIC, City University of Science & Information Technology Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhuwa (KPK) was the guest speaker of the webinar.

The speaker referred to the Asia and Pacific Society Policy Report and gave some background statistics on the current situation of progress against SDGs in Pakistan. Pakistan ranked 129th out of 165 countries in a recent SDG Index Ranking, with an overall score of 57.7 percent, mainly for its progress on one of the 17 goals – climate action.

Moderate improvements were shown in the goals for poverty, health and wellbeing, water and sanitation, decent work, peace and justice, and partnership, but it stagnated on zero hunger, quality education, gender equality, clean energy, innovation, sustainable cities and communities, and ‘life below water’. It actually went backwards on ‘life on land’.

In 2021, Pakistan was ranked 153th in the Global Gender Gap Index, and in 2020, it ranked 154th  on the Human Development Index, with 38 percent of its population living with multidimensional poverty.

Population growth remains one of the biggest challenges for Pakistan’s development, with 60 percent of its population below the age of 25, and a fertility rate at 3.5 births per woman. This means that providing education, health and employment for a large and growing youth cohort will remain an issue for the foreseeable future.

Despite improved life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality remains high, indicating the gap in health services to the female population. Pakistan also remains one of only three countries that have not yet been able to eradicate polio.

In the education sector, literacy rates remain abysmal at 59 per cent, especially female literacy, which stands at roughly 50 per cent, compared to male literacy at 68 per cent. The quality of education and employability of school graduates is very low, and the growing young population has little to no access to quality schooling.

This brings the role of Universities in vogue and the speaker highlighted some of the major problems university faces in helping Pakistan achieve its targets in SDGs. He emphasized that it's the lack of direction that led to minimal progress in the right direction. However, now the Government through Higher Education Institutions and non-governmental organizations is making all possible efforts to push Pakistan forward using Universities for directed Research, industrial linkages and community engagement.