ABBOTTABAD, May 9: The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan has set a target of producing 1,500 PhDs a year. It also wants to increase the percentage of students enrolling for higher education from 3.8 to 8 per cent a year.

This was stated by Dr Mukhtar Ahmed, a member of the Organisation and Planning Department of the HEC, while speaking as chief guest at a two-day conference entitled “Techno Moot 2007”.

The conference was organised by the Comsats Institute of Information Technology. More than 60 educational institutions and at least 20 national and multinational organisations took part in the two-day event.

Renowned scholars and researchers from different organisations read papers and made presentations on latest developments in electrical engineering, mathematics, software development and other IT-related developments. Dr Mukhtar said the HEC was creating opportunities for young graduates to advance their careers to overcome shortage of PhDs in the country’s educational institutions.

He said the HEC was offering 10,000 scholarships besides calling back Pakistani researchers serving in different countries of the world to bridge shortage of top class professionals in different fields.

Apart from this, he said, the HEC had started a scheme to re-hire services of retired professors and doctors to raise the strength of these professionals to required level. He asked experts in the education sector to send their papers to the HEC.