ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has stopped PhD programs in various public and private Universities of the Country due to quality issues, sources said on Friday.
Sources told the state-run news agency that HEC will not compromise on academic corruption despite all the pressures, the national institution had to face from influential quarters.
However, they said that the overall situation has improved in past few years with a record 12,000 publications coming out in the year 2016. They said that the total number of research publications coming out of the Universities was merely around 850 in the past.
Moreover, sources told that over 1.4 million students are being offered higher education in 188 Universities of the Country under the HEC.
Sources said that if the students studying in affiliated Colleges and Universities is also taken into the account, the number of students further escalates to over three million.
They said that the percentage of female students has also increased to about 48 percent.
Sources said that in the past, there were around 2,76,000 students enrolled out of which 32 percent were females. However, the number of students have been increased with the passage of time, they added.
