ISLAMABAD, Dec 4: PhD courses that had flowered in the country's universities during the last decade with encouragement from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) have been petering out, according to academic sources.

They said the reason was that the universities preferred to hire visiting professors to teach the courses they offered, rather than hiring permanent faculty.

HEC had laid down the criteria for the university to have at least three permanent faculty members for introducing a PhD course. But the mushrooming private universities make do with visiting professors on the plea that academics meeting the HEC criteria were available in few numbers in the country.

In view of the shortage, the HEC started a programme of offering scholarships to university teachers to study for PhD abroad and return to teach or supervise research students in Pakistani universities for at least five years.

Though more than 700 scholarship holders have returned home after completing their four to five-year PhD courses so far, the private universities have largely carried on with visiting professors, to keep their operational costs low.

Normally, a visiting professor is paid between Rs2,500 and Rs4,000 as he goes delivering lectures from one university to another.

When the HEC sought the universities measure up to its criteria for running PhD, many universities decided to discard their PhD courses, according to the sources.

Some universities offered the excuse for their action that they would have sponsored their faculty members for doctorate courses but could not because of the HEC condition that a PhD candidate must be a permanent member of the sponsor's faculty.

HEC rules require that a university offering PhD courses must have minimum three permanent faculty members to supervise the courses.

Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) met this condition still it dropped its PhD in Journalism course two years ago. Other universities too are discouraging students desirous of doing doctorate because they find PhD courses not profitable to run.

An officer of HEC told Dawn on condition of anonymity that some grants were announced on HEC website for doctorate courses abroad but no university came forward to benefit from it and sponsor its students for the same. Eventually the scholarships were wasted because the offer of foreign donors financing 60 per cent of the scholarship lapsed, he said.

Iftikhar Ahmed, a lecturer at a local college, said that he wanted to do PhD in Journalism and first contacted National University of Modern Languages (Numl) but its administration said they were not offering PhD as, according to them, they did not have three PhDs to supervise the course.

Then he met Dr Siraj and Dr Saqib Riaz of AIOU but they also they also refused and said at present the university could not offer the course.

The sources said that at present there were 18 PhDs in Journalism all over the country and out of them 10 have crossed the age of superannuation and the rest are overburdened with workload.

Another student of PhD said that in Long Distance Learning Courses (for working persons) workshops and lectures were held at 2pm which suited the government employees but persons working in private offices could not spare time because their normal office timings were from 8am to 5pm.

Director Media of HEC Ayesha Ikram told Dawn that HEC ensured that quality criteria should be observed. If any university wanted to offer PhD course, it should find PhD supervisors. “HEC is always ready to guide the universities and students,” she said.

The AIOU public relations officer, Qasim Haider, said they discontinued offering PhD because there was rush of students in MS and M.Phil programmes, but, he said,  it has been decided that from next year PhD courses will be started again.