Through the Higher Education Commission’s Interim Placement of Fresh PhDs (IPFP) Programme, 1193 Pakistani PhDs have been successfully placed as assistant professors on Friday in the public and private sector universities across the country.
The scholars belonged to diversified fields like water resource management, biotechnology, food engineering, animal nutrition, bio chemistry, nano chemistry and nano catalysis, plasma physics, supply chain management, water resource engineering, cell biology, civil & environmental engineering, fish molecular biology, pharmaceutical chemistry, high energy physics, biomedical textiles, leadership, culture & social preferences, geophysics, mathematics, computer sciences, business education, social sciences, humanities, environmental sciences, biomedical textiles and other disciplines. These scholars had been initially employed for a period of one year on a handsome salary package and may be hired on a permanent basis on the completion of their tenure through the normal selection process of the host institution.
HEC also offers these scholars a startup research grant of Rs 0.5 million upon joining the host institutions. So far, the IPFP programme has processed around 1613 applications while 266 applicants are at the initial stages of placement.
Commenting on the program, HEC Chairperson Dr Javaid R Laghari said the HEC was not only striving to provide opportunities to the aspiring scholars to pursue higher degrees, both at domestic and international levels, but it had also devised the IPFP programme to facilitate the placement of these scholars at academic and research institutions. This comes as a result of the visionary approach of HEC to ensure proper utilisation of the manpower being trained in fields relevant to the socio-economic development of Pakistan through investments in the scholarship programmes.
The HEC Interim Placement of Fresh PhDs Program was underlying two-pronged approach; primarily it provides lucrative avenues of employment to the fresh PhD professionals and secondly it meets the faculty requirements of public and private sector universities/DAIs to ensure quality teaching and research, which was one of the core strategic aims of HEC. IPFP provides all Pakistani fresh PhD graduates an opportunity to be placed as assistant professors on a tenure track-system-based assistant professorship for a maximum of one year. The qualified applicants were placed only in those universities which were ready to offer these professionals a fair chance of absorption on permanent posts through normal selection process within the one year contract period. Further each IPFP PhD was also provided a Rs 0.5 million start-up research grant to initiate a feasible research project at his or her host university, immediately after joining. This on-going regular program was open to all fields. The placed scholars had found this programme quite useful and effective and termed the programme quite helpful in countering brain drain at the national level.
