The vice-chancellors of public sector universities across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have opposed devolution of the Higher Education Commission and demanded that the HEC be allowed to continue to function as an independent federal body.

A press release issued on Friday by the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) said that a meeting of all the public sector universities heads from the province was held here to discuss the growing concern among the academia regarding devolution of HEC to provinces despite the fact that the higher education fell in the federal legislative list according to the 18th Amendment.

The VCs lamented that decision of the Implementation Commission on the 18th Amendment to go ahead with the devolution of higher education would result in dissolution of HEC. They were of the view that if the decision was implemented it would reverse the progress made in the higher education sector in the past few years.

The VCs meeting, convened by the acting VC of UET Prof Dr Azzamul Asar, lauded the role of HEC that it played in promotion of higher education in the last eight years. They said India was also considering setting up a similar organisation to evolve its future higher education strategy on the lines of the ones formulated by HEC in Pakistan.

The meeting stressed that higher education being pivotal in national policy and planning HEC must be looked after by the federal government.

Earlier, on Nov 27, 2010 all the VCs of the public sector universities across the country had unanimously resolved that HEC functionality should not be changed and status quo should be maintained since HEC had performed exceptionally well and covered in 18th Amendment, the press release said.

The vice-chancellors also reiterated their stance in a meeting held with Executive Director HEC Dr Sohail Naqvi through video conference on Tuesday (March 22).

The meeting was also attended by Director IM Sciences Dr Nasser Ali Khan, Dr Ihsan Ali, VC Abdul Wali Khan University, Mohammad Farooq Swati, VC University of Swat, Dr Farhana Jehangir, VC Frontier Women University, Prof Dr Rasul Jan, VC University of Malakand, Dr Fida Khattak, acting VC KUST, Prof Dr Gul Majeed Khan, acting VC Gomal University, and Prof Dr Haider Shah, acting VC Islamia College University.

Source: Dawn News