The government's policy to produce more engineers has been harmful for the engineering education as many universities have expanded their programs without promoting their faculties and required infrastructure.
This concern was raised here at a seminar on "Accreditation of Engineering Programs", organised by the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) to foster standardisation procedures in engineering education for affiliation with the American Board for Engineering Technology (ABET) and with the Washington Accord.
Convenor PEC, Engineering Accreditation and Quality Assurance Committee (EA&QAC) Lieutenant General Syed Shujaat Hussain (Retd) said the government decision to give grant to universities on the basis of students for programs to produce more engineers was not fruitful as many institutions expanded programs without adhering to the required infrastructure, labs and faculties.
The PEC, in many cases, is at loggerheads with issue of accreditation over quality issue, thus it has decided to evaluate every program. He said only those, which are stable, would be granted three years accreditation and all the new programs would be given one-year accreditation and will be extended after evaluation.
The PEC has also circulated standardisation to the universities through different pro formas making mandatory for them to invite the regulatory body for visiting six-month ahead of starting new engineering program. The purpose is to inspect faculty and other facilities essential to run that program before allowing.
Shujaat underlined the need for check and counter check in a semester to ensure that extensive syllabus of the program is taught, suggesting that the Higher Education Commission (HEC) should play its role by offering preparatory semester to the students of backward areas who qualify for engineering education. This would help them to be at par with those in the class whose standard is high.
Planning Commission and PEC Chairman Dr Muhammad Akram Sheikh, in his address of welcome, said the quality assurance is a source through which an institution guarantees that standards of its education are being maintained at a desirable level and also enhanced with the global advancement in knowledge.
He said that PEC has organised the seminar of all stakeholders so that a process of exchanging views and seeking feedback could be accomplished, hoping that it would improve mechanism to standardise the evaluation criteria of quality assurance.
He said that PEC realised that further understanding and improvement is required not only to strengthen the accreditation system but to create essential awareness and thereby feedback among all the stakeholders, ie accreditors, students and parents, faculty members and industry professionals involved in quality assurance, evaluation process, and the society at large. They are required to 'be provided with a periodic opportunity to exchange ideas/views in order to overcome the shortcomings in the quality assurance and accreditation process.
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