A 'Quality Assurance Agency' will be established at the head office of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Islamabad, for all planning and monitoring aspects of the projects at a total cost of Rs 23.06 million.
Professor Dr Riaz Hussain Qureshi, adviser, Quality Assurance and Learning Innovation, said the HEC is moving ahead on the path of tremendous progress in higher learning sector using human and financial resources to increase the access to programmes and using all cautions to assure quality of the increased base of higher learning programmes.
He said the quality in higher education is a dynamic entity, which is the outcome of interaction among many factors, including inter-alia leadership, quality of faculty and students, infrastructure facilities, research and learning environment, governance, strategic planning, assessment procedures, and market force.
He said that the present status of quality in higher learning institutions of Pakistan is quite questionable in global context.
Majority of the Pak universities are not capable of meeting the international standards of higher education. The crucial gap in quality of higher education calls for focused approach to assure and enhance the standards of quality in the sector, he added.
Riaz Hussain Qureshi said that 'Quality Assurance' in higher education is a rising challenge in the global context as well. The goals of international compatibility and competitiveness cannot be achieved significantly without enhancing quality in higher learning on sustainable basis which, in turn, needs a mechanism of Quality Assurance and Enhancement.
He said the Quality Assurance Agency would perform major functions under the heads of monitoring and evaluation and capacity building for improving standards of quality in higher education across the board. This agency will also account for the major rising issue of quality versus quantity raised by all intellectual forums of the country, he added.
He said the agency will analyse the present state of Quality Assurance in higher education and will develop a sustainable mechanism of Quality Assurance in the form of Quality Enhancement Cells and capacity building programme required to meet the global challenges of developing a knowledge economy, he said.
The Agency will design and develop activities and mechanisms for capacity building in the focused area of Quality of knowledge being imparted by universities and higher education institutions.
With quantum increase in the budget grants for the higher education sector of the country it is now possible and logical to lay stress on the quality component outputs of higher learning and therefore, to bring about the revolutionary changes and improve the quality of output and efficiency of the higher education learning systems, a viable and sustainable Quality Assurance mechanism is essentially required. Riaz Qureshi said the Agency would contribute substantially to the success of other programmes of higher learning such as faculty, curriculum and infrastructure development.
The Quality Assurance Agency will also be responsible to assure the integration of important component of Quality in all developing fields and upcoming policies of higher education.
In the first phase, he said that this programme would be launched in 10 different universities at different locations.
Meanwhile, the HEC will establish a National Business Education Accreditation Council (NBEAC) to ensure quality in disciplines under its scope.
The council will be responsible for accreditation of all degree programmes of Business Administration, Public Administration, e-Commerce, Management, Marketing, Finance and HRM being conducted by universities, relevant departments and degree awarding institutions in the country.
The plan to set up the NBEAC was discussed at the meeting held at HEC. The Member (Operations and Planning) of HEC, Professor Dr Mukhtar Ahmed gave a detailed briefing about the principles, objectives, scope, functions and constitution of the council.
The NBEAC will consider the equivalence in various degree programmes before accreditation of degree programmes. Accreditation will be a mandatory process for all relevant academic programmes offered by public and private sector institutions.
The NBEAC will constitute Accreditation Inspection Committees (AICs) for the evaluation of relevant academic programmes for accreditation and publish a list of Ranking of Business/Management/ Administration programmes.
It will train and asses programme evaluators and assist academic institutions in planning their educational programmes for accreditation.
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