Since its inception, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) – the federal regulator of higher education – has had a largely confrontational relationship with degree awarding institutions in the country, particularly the public sector universities.
When President Gen Pervez Musharraf upgraded the University Grants Commission (UGC) to the HEC, he selected prominent scientist, Dr Attaur Rehman, to run it.
The HEC started its journey with controversy as it sought in 2002 to implement Musharraf’s Federal Universities Ordinance in higher education institutions of the country. Almost all universities launched a protest against the ordinance and the nascent HEC had later to give in.
However, the HEC later managed – through a stick-and-carrot strategy – to get most of its subsequent policies implemented, including the policy about discontinuing “MPhil leading to PhD” programmes.
A traditional route to the highest academic degree, this programme allowed a scholar to get his or her MPhil research converted to a PhD research after enhancing the quality and depth of the work.
Under the new policy, the research fellow now needed an MS degree – awarded after 18 years of education – or an MPhil degree for getting admission to PhD.
The decision to separate MPhil from PhD resulted in mass production of MPhils.
Apparently in order to accommodate these MPhils, the regulator made it mandatory for the universities to hire only MPhil degree holders even at the entry level position of lecturer.
The HEC also made it mandatory for the people desirous to get admission in the MPhil and PhD programmes to sit the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) and get a certain percentile.
The GRE – an American certification – was a costly affair and an MPhil or PhD candidate had to get himself registered on payment of $100.
Often these candidates could not get the required percentile and they had to pay $100 multiple times. Later, the HEC started its own GRE-style exam under the National Testing Service (NTS).
The NTS was relatively very cheap but the HEC in May 2014 suddenly decided to also discontinue it as a prerequisite to admission to MPhil and PhD and that too without assigning any reason.
Interestingly, the HEC in January 2021 also withdrew the condition of having an MPhil/MS degree for admission to PhD and declared that now candidates could apply for PhD after 16 years of education – in what appeared to be a 180 degree turn from the policies that the HEC had issued for 20 years.
This U-turn resulted in a confusion and put a question mark on the HEC’s notification which had earlier made it mandatory for universities to appoint only MPhil or MS degree holders as lecturers.
By the same notification, the HEC also removed the condition of sending a PhD thesis to two foreign evaluators, declaring that the PhD thesis will now be evaluated by Pakistani academics – a move that some academics believe will mitigate the credibility of Pakistani PhD programmes.
The programme specialist academics at the HEC, Dr Zulfiqar Gilani, confirmed that the regulator had changed its policy with regard to admission to PhD programmes and now only 16 years of education was enough to get enrolled in PhD.
Talking with reference to the new PhD policy, HEC first chairman Dr Attaur Rehman declared it a controversial move. “According to international criteria, 18-year education is a must for getting admission to PhD and that was the policy that I got implemented during my tenure,” he said.
Dr Atta also referred to the meeting of 180 vice chancellors of public and private sector universities held in the last week of October 2021 in Murree. ‘’At the meeting, 178 out of the 180 participants voted against the policy and urged the HEC to reverse it,” he said.
Renowned scientist and academic Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy said that the new HEC policy is based on the American model in which 16 years suffices for admission to PhD.
“This works well there but will not work well in Pakistan because subject mastery after 16 years in Pakistan is about that of 12 years in the US or the UK.
“Tragically the lower levels of our education system are working so badly that even after 16 years most students are unfamiliar with subject basics and unfit for higher studies. It is pre-college education that must be changed,” he added.
Dr Tariq Banuri, the incumbent chairman of the regulator, defended the new policy. He said the HEC wants the most brilliant of students to become academics and the new policy would help universities get the best human resource for their faculties.
Dr Banuri clarified that it is up to individual universities whether they want to give admission to the PhD programmes on the basis of MPhil/MS degrees or just BS or masters degrees. “But the HEC has right now allowed the people with 16 years of education to get admission to PhD.”
According to the HEC chairman, the new PhD course work will be of more credit hours than the course work of the existing PhD programmes as it will combine the credit hours at present separately offered at the MPhil/MS and PhD levels.
“The students who have already done their MPhil/MS will not have to make duplicate efforts as their course work at PhD would be different from students taking direct admission after 16 years of education and they would not have to do courses they have already completed at MPhil/MS level.”
To a question about the HEC’s earlier notification making it mandatory for them to hire only MPhil/MS degree holders as lecturers, Dr Banuri said the regulator has not yet made a decision about changing that policy as well.
“However, I personally feel that there is no harm in appointing the gold medallist students as lecturers after completion of their masters/BS programmes. This has been a tradition at our universities and it helps them to get the best human resource in their faculties,” he said.
Associate degree sage
The HEC in November 2020 also announced to rename the traditional two-year college degrees – like Bachelor of Commerce (BCom), Bachelor of Science (BSC) and Bachelor of Arts (BA) degrees – as “associate degrees”.
The decision impacted hundreds of thousands of students who rely on colleges for higher education, and colleges and public sector universities particularly in Sindh witnessed a phenomenal decline in admissions to their bachelors’ programmes in the new academic year.
In the VCs meeting in October 2021, the participants had also rejected the HEC’s decision not to recognize the two-year bachelors’ degrees issued to students enrolled in such programmes after the 2018 academic year.
Dr Hoodbhoy, however, welcomed the HEC’s decision to end the 2-year degree programme and to replace it with a 4-year programme. He said it is done elsewhere in the world. But it will be a step forward only if students are made to learn a wide variety of subjects and rote learning is eliminated.
“We must follow the best practices in international education. Details of 4-year programmes can readily be found on international college and university websites.”
Dr Tariq Banuri also defended the policy and emphasised that the new associate degrees will be better in terms of quality than the previous two-year bachelors’ programmes.
He also rejected as “misguiding” the reports which claimed that the new policy has resulted in reduction in the number of admissions to the bachelors’ programmes of colleges and universities.
Reign of quantity?
The HEC – which earlier made it mandatory for all the people pursuing higher education to first get an MPhil degree for getting admission to PhD programmes – also linked the promotion of university teachers to their research papers.
According to some academics, this move to link promotions to research papers spawned a reign of quantity in Pakistan’s academic world with university teachers dedicating most of their energies to churning out one research paper after another often with little regard for quality and originality.
They said the HEC’s decision actually sparked a race in universities with a number of academics forcing their students to conduct research to be published with their names appearing as co-authors.
“Interestingly, the regulator never understood that the ability to conduct an MPhil or PhD level research is not linked to an academic’s ability to teach. The prime duty of an academic is to teach.
“However, the HEC made research the only criterion for an academic’s appointment and promotion without taking into account his or her ability to teach,” said a teacher from Karachi University’s Psychology Department while talking to Bol News.
