How HEC Kills Creativity and How PEC Kills Creativity

How HEC and PEC kill creativity! They kill creativity by targeting the roots from where creativity and innovation originate. Creativity, innovation, new paradigms, new frameworks and and new ideas originate from out-of-the-box thinking, lateral thinking, inter-disciplinary aha experiences. However, HEC/PEC's notion of quality works in the reverse direction; they force faculty, curriculum as well as research to be imprisoned in rigidly defined boxes or cells! They compartmentalize knowledge and think that knowledge can be captured in boxes and in silos designated by the names of the disciplines, programs or departments. This helps the bureaucracy in imprisoning the faculty into existing rigidly defined boxes i.e. the name of the discipline written on the degree or the name of the department on the transcript. This box then becomes the territory on which turf wars are fought for future promotions and fancy designations of professors, chairpersons, and deans. It is on this turf that departmental politics is played out. This imprisoning of knowledge in silos has nothing to do with academics or the quality of higher education.
This is also discussed in my blogpost What does it Mean to Have a PhD: Myths of Specialization and Departmental Expertise
[https://syedirfanhyder.blogspot.com/2014/10/Myths-Definition-of-PhD-Specialization-Expertise.html]

HEC Ranking Fiasco Genesis

University Rankings in Pakistan

Dr. Syed Irfan Hyder, January 5, 2004

https://www.dawn.com/news/1065476 

This is with reference to the letter to the editor of Dawn, December 31, 2003 where the writer has highlighted the risks of jumping prematurely in the area of university rankings.

Development of a ranking system is a good idea, but coming up with a criteria that is complete, just, fair, valid, reliable and professional is a non-trivial undertaking as explained below. Hurriedly put together experiences of a few academicians in to a ranking system cannot be expected to be fair, valid or even professional.

It is surprising that with all the emphasis on R&D, there is a reluctance in investing in the research and subsequent development of the proposed ranking system. The ranking initiative is therefore headed in the same direction as the Model University Ordinance and Tenure Track initiatives. Recently a questionnaire was sent out by HEC that lacks in completeness as well as sufficiency. It is even without clearly laid out objectives and has typographical and structural mistakes. It is surprising to note the lack of thoroughness even in the booklet on Criteria for Establishing New Institutes and Universities that has been published and widely circulated. Institutions are threatened to be de-recognized if they do not conform to the booklet Criteria in five years!

What HEC Quality Criteria Did Not Measure

[Written in December 11, 2003]

This was written on the basis of HEC Survey that was circulated by HEC in 2003. Many of these areas are still not being covered.

The survey still relies too much on brick and mortar measurements.

Following important areas for determining the strength of an institute of higher learning and measuring its quality have not been covered in this survey and should be included:

• Financial control
• Administrative control
• Academic control
• Records Management
• MIS Support

Why HEC’s Foreign Faculty Hiring Plan failed

This was written in June 2003 when HEC with a fanfare started the program and spent billions of rupees.

Why HEC’s Foreign Faculty Hiring Plan may fail:

• 

Different Types of Research Contributions and Challenges in Defense

Paper Writing and Research Strategies

 [Copied from the net in 2012. Source unknown]

Introduction

Here is a brief reminder of how to write papers and what kinds of papers to write. Please also see the other materials on our web site on paper structure.

What matters most about a paper is what the reader gets out of it, not how much work you put into it. That is, after reading your paper, the reader should feel that he knows something new, has a better insight into something, or has a better idea of how to do something.

Each paper you write should stick to one main idea, and that idea should be clear enough that you can formulate it in a single sentence. If you can't tell someone else what the main contribution of your paper is in a single sentence, you haven't worked it out enough.

Writing papers doesn't need to be all that hard because papers fall into a small number of common categories. Most of them involve some problem that needs to be solved or some observation that needs to be explained; for the paper to be accepted, it's important that this problem or observation is interesting in the first place.

Solving problems that aren’t interesting to reviewers won't get you published. It is therefore important that you keep track of the literature and figure out what topics are likely going to be of interest to reviewers.

In writing your paper, keep in mind that many reviewers are graduate students like yourself. Think about how you approached your last few paper reviews. How well did you yourself know the literature? Did you give the authors the benefit of the doubt when you didn’t understand something? Did you ask for more experiments?

Quality and Duration of PhD Degree: Will HEC recognize Iqbal's PhD ?

Do you know that Allama Iqbal's PhD thesis would never have passed HEC's quality criteria of minimum duration of three years for a PhD!

Iqbal arrived in Germany between 17 to 20 July 1907. Munich University issued call for defense on 21st July. Defense was held on 10th November 1907.

A group photo, of young Allama Iqbal with his landlady and roommates during his stay in Heidelberg Germany. Year: 1907