KARACHI, Sept 21: The Higher Education Commission will issue the first-ever rankings of the public and private sector universities in January, said a member of the commissions' quality assurance committee (QAC) on Tuesday.

Speaking at a press conference after the committee's meeting at the University of Karachi, the QAC chairman, Dr Abdul Rauf, said a draft pertaining to faculty and facilities survey was finalized during the meeting for onward presentation to the HEC, which is likely to start collecting data about all operational universities in the country soon.

After the analysis of the data collected from universities in respect of faculty qualification, research output, facilities of libraries, laboratories and use of internet, students' enrolment and their acceptance in the job market after graduation, cost on education of one student, grading would be released in a document form for public appraisal and reference, he added.

Dr. Suhail Hussain Naqvi, member of HEC, present on the occasion, added that the rankings would be issued once in a year with the objective that public confidence with regard to standards and quality of teaching and learning in each department of a particular university is given a boost.

According to Dr Suhail Naqvi, the new grading mechanism for Pakistani universities and degree awarding institutes had been finalized after studying similar systems of international standards adopted in some other countries, but at the same the local ground realities have also been kept in mind.

The grading system would also help know the deficiencies and recommend remedial measures, added Dr Abdul Rauf, saying that this would help achieve excellence at the seats of higher learning.

The QAC meets at different universities under a revolving system. The chairman of the HEC, Dr Atta Ur Rehman, also attended the meeting for some time on Tuesday. The meeting also prepared a guidelines for giving affiliations to different educational institutions by the public sector universities.

Dr. Rauf, who is also the chairman of the Institute of Management and Technology, Lahore, informed the newsmen that the guidelines would be circulated by the HEC among public sector universities for their adoption and making amendments to their existing rules and statutes available, if needed, under the provincial government charter.

The purpose is to bring uniformity in the affiliation rules of various universities and do away with some wrong practices of the past. University would be liable to give affiliation to only those institutions, which matched their standard, he said, adding no public sector universities would be allowed to operate outside their jurisdiction and they would be bound to grant affiliation only in faculties which they run on the campus.

To a question, Dr Suhail said that in line with a decision of the federal cabinet of 2002, private universities or institutes established in future would not be able to grant affiliation to other institutions.

He said about 2,500 scholarships had been arranged for poor students of public and private sectors universities, with the collaboration of the United States Agency for International Development and the Japan International Cooperation Agency. The scholarships are aimed at need based financing to poor but talented students, he added.

He said that the QAC meeting also recommended that the HEC and universities functioning under it should move for achieving ISO 9000 standards. The KU vice-chancellor Dr Pirzada Qasim also spoke on the occasion.

The vice-chancellors Dr A K Q Rajput of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Lt Gen (retd) Mumtaz Rajput of Peshawar University, Dr Najma Najam of Fatima Jinnah Women University, and senior officials of HEC, Dr Riaz Qureshi, M Jalil Ahmad, Zulfiqar H Gillani and Zia Batool were also presented during the press conference.