LAHORE: Several private universities in Punjab have drawn the attention of the chief minister towards the alleged non-serious attitude of some Punjab Higher Education Commission (PHEC) officials.

Private universities claimed that the launch of new programmes and approval of sub-campuses was continuously being marred by this behaviour.

In a letter to Shahbaz Sharif, Punjab Private Universities Association (PPUA) claimed that private varsities of the province were suffering due to “prolonged delays and non-serious attitude” of several PHEC officials.

PPUA said academics in Punjab had welcomed the establishment of PHEC, hoping that it would facilitate higher education institutions.

“Universities are facing problems with regard to accreditation of academic programmes and sub-campuses. PHEC officials dealing with this are unprofessional due to which several programmes are still pending unnecessarily. Several cases which were transferred from the federal Higher Education Commission to PHEC are also pending,” the PPUA letter stated.

The association also claimed that at least 25 campus approval cases were still pending. It alleged that deputed officials at PHEC gave an account of 13 cases, misreported facts and pointed out mistakes in documents received from private universities. “PHEC is not paying any attention to our complaints.”

They also claimed that investments amounting to millions of rupees made by the private sector in higher education were at stake. It urged the CM to look into the matter and redress their grievances.

A commission official told Dawn that PHEC Chairman Dr Nizamuddin was personally monitoring the matter of accreditation. He also said that there had been no official guidelines for sub-campuses in the past, but “now a committee headed by the PHEC chairman is framing rules/guidelines and the process will be completed in six weeks”. The official added that PHEC had forwarded 10 campus approval cases to the provincial higher education department and three cases of new faculty and programmes to the patron/chancellor.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2017