November 16, 2006	Thursday	Shawwal 23, 1427

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LAHORE, Nov 15: No provincial government can award a university status in future to any public or private institution without the permission of a committee constituted on the guidelines of the Higher Education Commission, it is learnt.

Sources in the HEC informed Dawn on Wednesday that the decision had been taken to stop the practice of awarding university status to those institutions which lacked the capacity to become a full-fledged university under the Model University Ordinance.

“The matter of awarding university status to an institution will first go to the steering committee of the provincial education secretaries which will give recommendation to the charter-awarding committee of a province to take a decision,” they said, adding that a charter-awarding provincial committee had the HEC representation as well.

At present, Punjab, Sindh and the NWFP have reportedly constituted (charter awarding) committees while Balochistan has yet to comply with the HEC guidelines in this respect.

A senior officer of the provincial education department said the experiment of elevation of public-sector colleges to universities and awarding of varsity status to some private institution could not work because most of them failed to come up to the expectations of both provincial governments and the HEC. They (institutions) were required to establish themselves as seats of higher learning with improved quality of education and research like any good university, he added.

He said in case of upgrading some colleges to the varsity level the provincial governments had taken the decision without doing proper homework while some private institutions had exploited their connection to obtain the university status.

In Punjab, at least five colleges have been upgraded and a few private institutions given the varsity status by the provincial government during the last five years. A few such cases have been reported in other provinces as well.

“To develop a successful university, brainstorming, shared vision of educationists and technocrats, documentation, infrastructure and faculty development are required,” according to a professor at the Punjab University.

He says university management is not an easy thing. It requires development of strong academic and general administration, and financial order.

Pointing out the failure of the upgraded colleges, he says their main focus is on undergraduate students. They are not taking serious steps to develop capacity-building for the postgraduate programmes, he says, suggesting that such institutions should dispense with the intermediate courses and follow a good university as a role model in introducing the postgraduate programmes, besides hiring competent academics.

“The upgraded and private chartered institutions should not be allowed to open their sub-campuses without having basic infrastructure, required faculty, postgraduate courses of international standard and a strong linkup with the main campus,” the academic suggests.