ISLAMABAD, May 4: In pursuance of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) orders issued on April 30, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) will introduce a fee-refund policy in the universities and colleges for the students.

Earlier, the students had to lose their fee to secure a seat in the universities or colleges. After the HEC policy, they will be able to get major chunk of their fee back if they don’t want to get admission in a university or a college. The HEC took the decision to this effect in its 26th meeting.

On April 30, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) declared the non-refund fee policy of all the educational institutions as illegal and directed the HEC to formulate a policy to safeguard the students’ interests.

Following the court directions, the HEC started work on a mechanism to facilitate the students in getting the part of their fees back if they preferred to forego their seat for a better choice. The HEC will also work on formulating a consolidated and uniform admission test policy for the students so that they may not have to appear in the multiple entrance tests.

According to a HEC official, it is difficult to get admission in renowned institutions because every student wants to study in top-rank universities. The students apply for admission to more than one university and in some cases a student gets prospectus from four or five varsities. After the tests, when their names appear on the merit list, the students prefer better university.

He said that lower or middle rank institutions announced the names of the successful candidates much earlier than the top-rank universities or colleges and fixed the date for submission of fee before the renowned universities announced the merit list.

This situation puts the students in disarray as they have to forego their seat bearing the loss of fee if they are offered admission to top universities and colleges.

“The management of middle-level colleges and universities also want to have competent students in their classes to produce better results so they try to ensure the stay of good students in their institutions. Therefore, they announce the merit list much earlier than the top rank universities,” he said.

According to the sources, it will take a couple of months to implement the decision because HEC has to take the vice chancellors of the universities on board in this regard.