LAHORE, July 28: The Punjab Education Department has launched a drive to locate illegal campuses of private universities and degree-awarding institutions having origin other than the Punjab.

The education department has directed all 34 executive district officers (education) to trace illegal campuses in their respective districts and report within two weeks.

The department has issued these orders following Higher Education Commission’s directions to all provincial education departments to launch an operation against illegal satellite campuses in provinces other than of their origin.

The HEC had also issued directives to governors, who are chancellors of chartered universities in their respective provinces, to pressure education departments to speed up the campaign.

The commission’s steering committee comprising all provincial education secretaries and commission representatives headed by HEC executive director Dr Akram Sheikh was also told in a meeting in Islamabad two weeks ago that the commission was working on a national-level strategy to determine strict punishments for those violating commission’s standards.

It was learnt that the new strategy would also consider to hold illegal campuses of chartered universities in other provinces accountable for the damage done to the prospective careers of students.

The committee, formed to promote coordination between federal and provincial governments regarding all matters relating to the higher education sector in Pakistan, was also told that lack of monitoring and evaluation procedures on the part of the HEC and the provincial education departments was a basic reason for the mushroom growth of illegal satellite campuses of chartered universities in provinces other than their origin.

Punjab Education Department officials said that the HEC was now determined to raise the quality of domestic higher education to international standards.

They said the Punjab government now adhered to the criteria developed by the HEC to establish or affiliate institutions of higher learning.