LAHORE, March 4: The Higher Education Commission has directed all universities to abandon the self-finance scheme and admit students to their morning and evening sessions purely on merit.

The commission has also asked the universities that it will pay the needy students' fees under scholarship schemes. This was stated by HEC chairman Prof Dr Attaur Rehman while speaking at a news conference at the commission's regional centre on Friday.

He said the HEC was introducing two scholarship schemes - $10 million funded by the JICA and $7 million (USAID) to assist brilliant but needy students in all the public- and private-sector universities. For affording students, he said, the universities had been directed not to enhance fees.

He said the NWFP had already abandoned the self-finance scheme while other provinces would gradually abolish it. "The universities failing to comply with the orders will face reduction in their funding," he added.

He said the scholarships would come on ground during the next six to 10 weeks. Prof Rehman said the federal cabinet in February 2002 had allowed five-year grace period to new chartered universities to attain minimum standards.

Answering a question about the endowment fund and land acquisition conditions, he said the federal cabinet decision could not be relaxed by anybody except the cabinet. He, however, said the HEC could reconsider the modalities of keeping endowment fund if banks were not offering good profit rates.

He said the government would withdraw university charters from those failing to accomplish minimum standards. Such defaulter institutes, he said, would be made affiliated colleges of public universities. He, however, said the public universities would conduct their affiliation process before accepting those to their affiliated colleges.

He said the mushroom growth of universities had proved to be a cruel joke for students, as they stood nowhere after spending many years. He said the HEC printed 'Parents Alert' advertisement in newspapers to inform guardians about 180 illegal universities operating in the country. He said the names of certain universities later deleted were included inadvertently, or some of them did not exist altogether.

Answering a question about the fate of students studying in such universities, he suggested that they should switch to recognized universities. Prof Rehman denied that the HEC was working on any plan to facilitate students of such universities to appear for a commission examination to get a recognized degree. "The HEC can never take care of hundreds and thousands of students studying in 'illegal universities.'

The HEC chairman said 18 universities, including those for engineering, had adopted the Tenure Track System. Others would gradually adopt it, he added. Under the TTS, he said, assistant professors up to professors would be offered Rs50,000 to Rs134,000 salary a month while the foreign faculty would be offered Rs70,000 to Rs210,000 salary.

He said the HEC was also working to reverse the brain-drain and had so far hired 211 faculty members under the foreign faculty hiring programme. Iterating that none of the Pakistani universities figured among the top 1,000 universities in the world, Prof Rehman said the HEC was working to strengthen universities' faculty.

He said 1,569 candidates had been registered for indigenous PhD, 495 for foreign MS/PhD, 99 for post-doctoral, 733 in-service training, 231 in science and technology PhD and 111 in PhD in social sciences, arts and humanities.

Calling the Pakistani universities as mere colleges, he said there were only 1,700 PhD faculty members. He said the commission wanted to enhance this figure to 20,000 PhD faculty members in universities during next 10 years. The commission also had plans to produce 1,200 to 1,500 PhDs every year during next six to seven years, he said.

Though numbers were important, he said, the HEC was also focusing on quality issues in universities. He said the candidates for PhD scholarships were being selected through a national-level examination.

During this fiscal, Prof Rehman said the HEC had approved 127 projects at a cost of Rs14.416 billion. He said the HEC was also providing infrastructure to universities and had linked all of them with fibre optic and radio links, besides providing them with video-conference equipment, so that faculty could be shared at national and international level.

Prof Rehman said the HEC was also finalizing Book Bank scheme under which books would be provided at each department's seminar room. He said the commission was also focusing on co-curricular activities. It would hold national sports gala in Islamabad next month.

Earlier, the HEC chairman addressed deans, heads of departments and professors from all universities in the city at the Punjab University's Environmental Law Centre. He briefed the faculty on the commission's achievements and future plans.