LAHORE, Aug 29: The Punjab universities’ vice-chancellors conference has decided to introduce uniform academic calendar and the uniform grading system in semester system examinations.

Presiding over the conference at the Governor’s House on Tuesday, Governor Khalid Maqbool directed the seven public sector universities to engage COMSATS’ National Testing Service for holding entrance test for admission to the respective universities.

He said the NTS entrance test weightage would be valid for all the seven public sector universities. He said this uniform entrance test system would save students from appearing for tests for admission to different departments in respective universities.

The governor also directed that no university would sell admission forms. Instead, each university would be required to upload their admission forms on their websites so that students could download them.

The conference also reviewed progress in PhD studies and foreign faculty hiring programmes. It also discussed the strategies for the promotion of linkages among universities, joint research projects with the industry and setting up of placement bureaus in universities for students’ counselling regarding professional prospects.

The governor directed that the universities should enhance the number of their foreign faculty and send their existing faculty abroad on scholarship for higher qualification.

He vowed that the government would ensure imparting of quality education without increasing fees in public sector universities.

He also announced that the students, who wanted to become science teachers, would be offered free education in the University of Education’s 10 sub-campuses all over the province.

Higher Education Commission’s executive director Dr Suhail Husain Naqvi said the `policy of synergy’ was commission’s first priority to promote research culture. He said the HEC would fund those research projects on a priority basis that would be prepared by a consortium of universities.

The conference also offered fateha for Bahauddin Zakariya University vice-chancellor Dr Mohammad Naseer Khan and Prof Abdul Rauf Sheikh, who died in the Fokker crash last month, and University of Education’s Prof Dr Kausar who was killed by dacoits.