ISLAMABAD, Feb 12: The vice-chancellors (VCs) of the public sector universities on Thursday committed to come up with five- year plans at the earliest possible time to improve the education standards in their respective institutions.
The VCs made this commitment at a meeting presided over by the HEC chairman, Dr Attaur Rehman, during which Dr Ata asked them to immediately come up with five-year plans to improve the education standards in their respective varsities.
Dr Attaur Rehman said: "We have to put our public sector universities on the right track through faculty development, proper utilization of funds and evaluation of faculty members in an appropriate way."
He said for enhancing and upgrading the higher education sector, the heads of the universities should make it sure that specific issues concerning the higher education should be dealt with on priority basis.
All the vice-chancellors should come up with next five-year plans for their universities including the long-term vision plans regarding enhancement of enrolment and establishment of new disciplines in their universities which are need of the hour, he said.
The HEC chairman further said the public sector universities should introduce their own websites containing all the information about their programmes for public information. He also maintained that the vice-chancellors should look through all the programmes initiated by the HEC and utilize them in an appropriate way.
He said there should be no compromise on quality of higher education, as none of the country's universities ranked among the best universities of the world.
The participants of the meeting also resolved that the autonomy of the universities should be maintained as per world standards and the HEC should have the role to assist all the universities in enhancing the quality of education and research in the universities.
Engineer M. Akram Shaikh, the HEC executive director, was of the view that the meetings of the vice-chancellors of the public sector universities should be held quarterly or by-annually to resolve the problems of the public sector universities well in time.
During the meeting, it was also decided that priority should be given to the universities situated in the remote areas of the country and social sciences sector should also be included in the priority fields for development of higher education sector of Pakistan.