HEC defers fees of flood-affected students

ISLAMABAD: Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed has announced that the students from flood-affected areas, enrolled at public and private universities, would get fee deferral for two semesters, ARY News reported on Friday.  

In a statement to state-run news agency APP, the HEC Chairman said all public and private universities were working to facilitate people of the flood-hit areas, adding that veterinary universities had also been directed to support livestock in these devastated areas.

He also announced that the higher education commission was also working out a proper plan for compensating the universities in the flood-hit areas.

In response to a question, Dr Mukhtar Ahmed said the HEC had also launched programmes related to artificial intelligence and cyber security in many universities, including the Air University, NUST, and the UET.

He underlined the need for promoting skills education across the country, terming it more valued than simple educational degrees. He further added that skills education was playing important role in development of the country.

Underscoring the problem of awarding affiliation to colleges, he pointed out that universities had awarded affiliation to around 5,000 colleges so far across the country. “Such number of affiliation means compromising the quality of education,” he regretted.

“A policy has been formulated to properly monitor the performance of affiliated colleges through inspection,” he said, adding that affiliation of the poor-performing colleges would be cancelled.

Highlighting key issues in higher education sector, Dr Ahmed said, “We can significantly improve our educational institutions ranking by improving the quality and management in educational institutions and discouraging politics and grouping.”

He also informed about the need-based scholarship programme being provided by the HEC to people with disability with clear instructions for public and private universities to implement it. “Two percent quota has also been reserved for the disabled students in all universities.”