HEC announces 3,000 scholarships for PhD programme

It is the right of the institution to reject or accept any M. Phil leading to PhD awardee of Higher Education Commission while evaluating the candidate according to the set criteria of that university. This criterion, however, should be strictly in line with the HEC standard.
Executive Director Higher Education Commission of Pakistan Dr S Sohail Naqvi expressed these views while presiding over the seminar entitled Ph.D programme and progress here in the PG seminar room of the university. He said that GCU being the highest and the oldest seat of learning in the country should contribute more in the realm of higher education in the country.
Naqvi further said that GCU had set an example by accepting certain academic challenges under the leadership of the incumbent vice chancellor Professor Khalid Aftab and had become a model institute for the rest of the universities of the country.
He said that 3,000 scholarships were available for indigenous PhD programme but suitable candidates are lacking. He also stressed that universities should generate funds through the triangle of government, institution itself and through donors, philanthropists and tycoon alumni, as happens in the West.
The vice-chancellor GCU said that funding was a major problem of institutions and even the minimum funds required for the academic take-off as modern institutions are not provided at the moment and institutions are as good as their resources.
He also said not to speak of local scholars of high repute, HEC authorities were not willing to accept even foreign faculty of international repute working at School of Mathematical Sciences of the GCU as PhD supervisor.
Dr Naqvi assured that the problems being faced by the academic faculty of the GCU would be addressed at the earliest. He also told that HEC was introducing a new programme for PhD in social sciences in which a scholar would spend first and third year in Pakistan, and second and fourth year abroad for the completion of his Ph.D.
Earlier, Deputy Registrar GCU Abdul Saboor, in his briefing told the participants that GCU was entertaining 281 M. Phil and 87 PhD scholars in faculty of science and technology whereas faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and enrolled 173 M. Phil and 8 PhD scholars. The number of students admitted to M. Phil and PhD programme in the faculty of Languages, Islamic and Oriental learning are 109 and 41 respectively during 2006-07 session.
He also said that there were 123 PhD faculty members to impart the latest, time demanded and market driven knowledge to the students to equip them according to the demand of the international market.