Dozens of MS and PhD students of the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) are worried about their future owing to the uncertain fate of the several programmes on which Higher Education Commission (HEC) showed observations for not fulfilling the required criteria for their functioning.
Talking to Pakistan Today, several students voiced serious concerns over the university management for not taking steps to resolve the issue promptly.
An MS student on condition of anonymity told this scribe that the IIUI management should resolve the mystery pertaining to the fate of the some programmes forthwith, as future of more than 40 MS and 25 PhD male and female scholars is virtually at stake.
“They are really concerned about their future because the HEC has not provided NoC to our Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in basic Sciences (CIRBS) Department,” he added.
However, to a query regarding the closure of programmes and latest development on the issue, Syed Hassan Aftab, IIUI spokesperson, in his email reply, said that the HEC PhD review committee had shown observations on eight programmes of the university, regarding which a well-updated reply in terms of statistics of students and faculty, has been submitted to HEC by IIUI.
The university and HEC officials were in touch as well regarding the reply and soon a positive development in this regard will be seen, he added.
According to HEC’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) for establishment of a new university/institution of higher education, the HEC is authorized to advise the federal government and the provincial government on proposals for granting a charter to award degrees in both public and private sectors.”
‘The establishment of a university/degree awarding institution is a multi-step process, according to SOPs, which involves fulfilling the legal formalities as well as making available the required academic, financial and physical infrastructure.
The HEC recommended that Department of Natural Sciences of IIUI should be split because the newly-established department doesn’t have its nomenclature. According to a letter by the HEC titled PhD Programme Review of IIUI, dated December 14, 2016 said, “The university should split the programme of PhD Natural Sciences into specialized disciplines and the scholars should be moved to their relevant departments for completion of their degrees.”
The HEC has directed the IIUI to stop offering further admissions in its eight PhD programmes owing to several academic deficiencies. The HEC also raised questions over 16 other PhD programmes of the IIUI and directed it to bring improvements to them. As per rules it is mandatory that at least 3 relevant full time faculty members should be appointed in the department.
The letter reads the university should halt all the activities of the programme, including conduction of classes, examination, thesis defense, award of degrees etc., until HEC permits.
A senior official in HEC said that the review committee recommended the split of PhD Programme of Natural Sciences not a closure of the programme aimed at bringing remarkable improvement.
He said that the committee did not recommend instant closure of the programmes, because the future of the students is of paramount importance for the authority.
According to the committee report, the list of halted programmes concludes as PhD in Econometrics as there is not a single full time PhD faculty member, Mechanical Engineering is also short of 3 permanent PhD faculty members, PhD in Engineering Management lacks such criteria, PhD in Marketing did not fulfill the requirement of permanent PhD faculty members as it possesses only one such faculty member.
Technology Management, Islamic Banking and Finance, Pakistan Study and Political Science have also been halted by the Committee due to shortage of the same arrangements, as they have one, zero, one and two Permanent PhD faculty members respectively.
The 15 other PhD programmes in the varsity include Computer Sciences, Physics, Mathematic, Urdu, English, Electrical Engineering, Management, Finance, Media and Communication, Law, Shariah, International Relations, Sociology, Psychology and History and were asked by the Committee to stop ‘fresh induction of students.’
Syed Hassan Aftab in his email reply said that IIUI was being hailed nationally and internationally for its efforts to achieve its goals of internationalization and provision of best quality higher education to its students of more than 40 countries.
The university recently was elected as member of Executive Council of Federation of Universities of Islamic World (FUIW) among 317 varsities of Muslim countries for its efforts we just mentioned.
In addition, the HEC has also lauded IIUI for scoring 87.67pc marks in an evaluation by Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) of HEC.
He expressed optimism that soon a positive development in this regard would be seen, as the university has addressed almost all the observations raised during the review process.
“Non-offering admissions in some of the PhD programmes in the university is based on considering the students teacher ratio in the concerned programme along with other factors,” he concluded.
Its all due to teachers politics. Some of teachers are insulting the rules and non serious in their duties. Arabic president of iiui have no know how and una le to deal with the worest situation in university. Please save our university and remove teacher involved in politics
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