HEC Shuts Down 110 PhD Programs Due to Lack of Quality

Over 110 PhD programs across various public and private universities have been closed due to poor quality. The information was provided by Dr Mukhtar Ahmed, who is the HEC chairman, in a seminar conducted to discuss higher education trends and prospects in Pakistan.

“We will not tolerate corruption in academia even though the HEC is under a lot of pressure from those with influence in Pakistan”, he added.

He said that the HEC’s current focus is to improve the quality of education imparted in Pakistan while ensuring that academic research being done is of use to Pakistan and society at large.

“There is no use in racing to get listed in rankings and journals with higher impact factor if there is no impact or practical outcome of the generated knowledge.”

It took HEC and PEC over 7 years to get an international engineering membership, he revealed. This will help Pakistani engineering students to get a job in any country in the world without having to pass equivalence tests or undertaking any other exams.

Ahmed said:

We are working on various partnerships and improving the overall standard of education in Pakistan rather than focusing on the numbers game. Numbers don’t mean anything if the students are not well equipped for the professional life”

While the focus is on quality rather than quantity, 2016 was still a record year for publications from Pakistan as over 12,000 came out of the country. There is a strict no plagiarism policy and a focus on research has started to bear fruit, however, there is still a long way to go before Pakistan can match standards set in the West, he said.

Universities and Enrolled Students in Pakistan

Before the HEC was set up in 2002, there were only 59 universities in Pakistan and most of them were located in major cities. Around 275,000 students were enrolled with female representation at a poor 32%.

On contrast, now there are 188 universities in Pakistan right now and around 1.3 to 1.4 million students are enrolled. If students in affiliated colleges and universities are added to the equation, the number rises to well above 3 million.


  • where is the list propakistani? How an article can be completed without providing the full information.

    • Dear Dr. Mukhtar,

      Before taking the position of Chairman HEC you were the same person who was leaking complaints to HEC from CASE Islamabad students? Along with Sohail Naqvi (shareholder in CASE/CARE Islamabad) you actually did all to favor mafia in these institutions, serving military officers running business under the name of “Engineering Trust”. You actually along with Sohail Naqvi threatened many students, let CASE marks Masters and PhD exams which in no capacity it could, UET Taxila also let this happen.

      Inside of you, Sohail Naqvi, Maj. Shoaib and others is so ugly. Unfortunately when serving military officers are running this business and hundreds allowed to study in this institution without permission this all was with the blessing of army and air-force.

  • This is very good. People who only want to earn stipend and end up as PHD, they need to be discouraged. Genuine people who want to extend knowledge, and solve problems should be encouraged to do PHD. Just compare the quality and number of papers by pakistani faculty and other countries. Most faculty in Pakistan instead focus on grabbing funding and have sweatshops personal companies to benefit from . They are not at all interested at alk to do research and enhance knowledge and educate youth. Look at Ignite or ICT RND projects. All projects are purely development oriented and all are given to university professors.Why are we so stupid? What is the invention done by pakistani universities in last 30 years? Universities have made education business. Then these so called professors do not know how to work with industry. They need to sit on general stores not universities and sell grocery.

  • Of course, the article should be furnished in appropriate way. By the way this is not a solution. This kind of struggle should never finished. We pray to ALLAH to help us to convalesce our decisions. I suppose that we should launch the middle-ware to let us accomplish and overcome on “Lacking of Quality”. ALLAH bless on all of us. “Long live Pakistan”.


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