The Higher Education Commission (HEC) on Tuesday celebrated its decade long successes towards achieving the goal of providing quality education to the students according to international standards. An interactive event was organized in connection with the celebration of 10 years establishment of the HEC which was attended by vice chancellors, faculty members and scholars from different parts of country through video conferencing. On the occasion, HEC Executive Director Prof Dr S. Sohail H. Naqvi said that the establishment of the HEC in September 2002 had heralded a revolution in the higher education in Pakistan.
He said that the HEC had accomplished far more in ten years since its establishment than had been achieved by any such department in the first 55 years of Pakistan’s existence.
Dr Naqvi said that since September 2002, the higher education sector in Pakistan had witnessed the launch of a sea change of initiatives by the HEC that had fundamentally altered the higher education landscape of the country. He added that a change was visible in all the universities and degree awarding institutions of Pakistan.
He said that there was excitement in the air of these institutions, and scholars and researchers were beginning to roam freely in the hallways of knowledge once again. “The change is physically manifested in the restored buildings, new classrooms, new laboratories, computers, jogging tracks and state-of-the art libraries”, he added. He also acknowledged the support of the government and the people of Pakistan in this regard.
While highlighting the ten years achievement of higher education sector, he informed that as an outcome of the dedicated hard work by university faulty and support by the university administration, six Pakistani universities were now ranked among the top 300 Asian universities while two Pakistani universities were now ranked among the top 300 sciences and technology institutions of the world.
The other main achievements of the HEC included the spread of higher education to every region of the country with an increase in the number of universities campuses in Pakistan from 168 to 258 including the establishment of 41 new universities. Similarly, the other accomplishments of the commission included the increase in student enrollment at universities from 330,000 to over a million, the increase of percentage of women enrolled in universities from 36% to 46%, the awarding of more than 10,000 local and foreign scholarships through a well-defined and transparent mechanism that had made no compromise on merit and the awarding of 2,000 scholarships for the talented youth of Balochistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
