Higher Education Commission (HEC) Undertakes Number Of Initiatives To Improve Quality Education

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) is undertaken a number of initiatives for continuous improvement of quality of higher education in accordance with fast-paced world

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 28th Feb, 2020 ) :The Higher Education Commission (HEC) is undertaken a number of initiatives for continuous improvement of quality of higher education in accordance with fast-paced world.

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

Talking to APP, they said that the commission has 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 revamped Education Testing Council (ETC) under which the entry tests were standardized for public and private universities of Pakistan. The aim of constitution of ETC was to hold uniform, accessible and competitive assessment base 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 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, sources added. They said that academic research was a key element for 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 include 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 fund raising drive for universities, which was culminated in 2019. Under the drive, the universities set a target of mobilizing 20 per cent of their revenue from non-government and non-tuition sources by 2020.

The Higher Education Management Information System was also established with the purpose to automate all the manual process and business of the Department for high information among sections/offices of the Department and hence for timely decision making by the Administration.

It also taken measures to improve the quality education were included revision of Framework for HEC National Distinguished Professors, revision policy for Pakistani Higher Educational Institutions offer degree program in collaboration with foreign Universities.

The other measures in that regard were structuring and result-based funding of Centers of Excellence/ Centers for advance studies/Area Study Centers, PhD Procedures and Systems and HEC Plagiarism Policy.