HEC-backed ETC suffers setback after releasing ‘faulty’ results

ISLAMABAD: The Education Testing Council (ETC), established by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to conduct entrance and scholarship tests for the universities, has suffered a serious setback after releasing “faulty” results of University of Engineering Science and Technology of Pakistan (UESTP) scholarship test.

The UESTP scholarship test was held on October 8, 2017, in which around 4,000 candidates appeared and the paper prepared for the test was very easy.

Sources privy to the development told Pakistan Today that after the results were announced, the students protested against it, calling it “unfair”.

In the wake of the strong reaction from the students, the administration had to review the result and subsequently, uploaded a revised result of the same test. However, the revised result put a question mark on the HEC policy of transparency and merit because the marks of few students increased and others’ marks decreased without any justification. The commission also didn’t address the reservations of the affected students.

Speaking to Pakistan Today, a senior official in the HEC said that the commission should have conducted a new test rather than revising the result as it badly tainted the image of the commission.

Another official said that the HEC has already failed to convince the universities to conduct tests through HEC-backed ETC; the recent episode would further hurt the commission’s efforts in this regard.

HEC Director Media Ayesha Ikram told Pakistan Today that the allegations are baseless and no complaint has been received on the said matter.

Ayesha said that some students took tests in a different category and in application form mentioned another category that is also resolved.

The ETC was formulated by HEC in 2016 in compliance with a Lahore High Court (LHC) judgment aimed at conducting admission tests for all recognised universities and degree awarding institutes (DAIs), however, the majority of the universities have preferred to conduct their admission tests through their own admission entry tests instead of ETC.

The UESTP scholarship project awards MS leading to PhD and PhD scholarships at top-ranked universities of USA, UK, Canada, Austria, China, France, Germany, Belgium, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Turkey, Australia, Italy, etc. Most of the universities and countries are offering reduced tuition fee rates to the HEC.