Former finance minister Sartaj Aziz has said that for imparting quality education, special emphasis should be on research and establishment of centres for applied research. He said that quality is something, which was a continuous process because creation of new knowledge and new phenomena is continuous process.
He expressed these views in a 3-day 2nd International Conference on Assessing Quality in Higher Education on Monday at the auditorium of Punjab University Environmental Law Centre. The PU Institute of Quality and Technology Management (IQTM) and the University of Management and Technology (UMT) are the organisers of the conference while it has been funded by the HEC.
Aziz termed the conference a landmark international moot on a very important issue. He said that quality education needs smooth transparent and merit based admission process, development of courses (syllabus) by highly professional and experience teachers.
It also needs imparting good communication skills in the graduates by establishing an internal evaluation system and good quality assurance team. He said unfortunately there was no Pakistani university included in the top 500 universities of the world and there was need of a long journey of efforts to ensure quality education in our universities. Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Mujahid Kamran said that in this modern time, quality higher education was the key to success, survival, progress and prosperity in every walk of life.
He said the quality higher education depends upon a variety of factors but the key to it was inspiring teaching which could unite the experience of old people and talent of youth into the zest of knowledge. He said there was shortage of PhD teachers in the country. He said in Punjab University there were a total 650 teachers out of which only 220 (roughly 30 percent) were PhDs. He said HEC had initiated landmark programmes to produce quality PhD teachers but now unfortunately HEC's 2.3 billion recurring grant has been curtailed by the government.
He reiterated his appeal to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and other authorities concerned to get the HEC withheld funds released saying otherwise a large number of HEC's fruitful future oriented development project would be washed away. He said quality education could be ensured only through generous patronage and committed teachers.
Speaking on the occasion IQTM Director Dr Niaz Ahmad said that organisation of quality assurance conferences was a regular feature of their institution. They have already organised a successful international conference on this issue and the next moot will be held in the year 2010.
He said that the objective of the conference was to emphasise that standard of higher education needed to be improved in country, and best practices in the developed world be shared in Pakistan. He said that 30 directors of quality enhancement cell of different varsities of Pakistan and 350 participants including 31 VCs and delegates from eight countries are participating in the conference.
He said that since top management of varsities are present in the moot they will sit together and formulate recommendations for improvement of quality higher education in the country and the same would be sent to the governor. He said that the directors of the quality enhancement cells of various varsities would have separate meeting during this 3-day conference.