HEC asks universities to submit data for ranking by 15th

Islamabad: is the last date announced by Higher Education Commission (HEC) for all the public and private universities across the country to submit their data for carrying out ranking but very few universities have submitted their data yet.

An official of HEC told APP that all public and private Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) were asked to submit their data by July 15 for carrying out ranking process but around 10 out of 132 universities have submitted their data. HEC is taking the initiative of ranking the universities to help strengthen their indigenous quality culture and improve international visibility. The HEC has already directed the universities to meet the deadline for providing authentic data and those which failed to provide data will be ranked zero by placing them at the bottom in the ranking list to be published through print media.

HEC’ initiative to carry out quality based ranking of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is aimed at international compatibility, primarily based on the QS Ranking System acceptable widely across countries. The commission has taken various initiatives to bring HEIs of Pakistan at par with international standards and ranking is one of the measures to scale the success of efforts to achieve international competitiveness in education, research and innovation.

Since QS World Ranking is considered as one of the effective quality based ranking of HEIs at international level so HEC has desired to build the capacity of Pakistani universities to get more international visibility through reflection in international rankings including QS Ranking.

The rankings of universities are very important for students, parents, employers, government organizations, policy makers and other stakeholders and the results will change the context in which universities are functioning currently, the official said. The ranking is self-learning and self-improving exercise which is meant for benefiting the academic and research communities programmes of the country.

HEC is also increasing number of its Quality Enhancement Cells (QEC) to ensure quality education in private and sector universities across the country.

The initiative is launched with 10 Quality Enhancement Cells (QEC) established in 2005 and now its number are growing gradually rising to 84. HEC has put in place the model of quality assurance nationally in 740 programmes so far which will encompass all the programmes of institutes of higher learning in the country, thereby helping to improve the programme quality and enhance student learning. HEC is also facilitating the universities by providing guidelines, training, awareness seminars and workshops along with introducing the Quality Assurance Model in the country. A number of steps taken in this regard include the integration of the concept of quality assurance in higher learning to achieve enhanced levels of international compatibility.

For this purpose, the internationally accepted best practices relating to both internal and external quality assurance have been introduced in the higher learning sector of the country and these involve extensive input related to the development of quality criteria, processes and capacity building.The news.