Islamabad, Sep 1: The Higher Education Commission, which is in charge of the Higher Education Development in Pakistan (HEDP) project, which is supported by the World Bank (WB), conducted its tenth WB supervision mission in Islamabad.
According to a news release from yesterday, HEDP is a 400 million USD flagship project of HEC that aims to enhance teaching and learning, encourage research excellence in key economic sectors, and strengthen higher education governance. Over the course of a week, comprehensive discussions were conducted to assess the progress made on each of the six HEDP project components, encompassing protections and fiduciary elements.
The World Bank team met with Chairman HEC Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed for an introduction meeting under the direction of Ms. Inga Afanasieva, a Senior Economist at the World Bank. He gave the crew the reassurance that HEC is dedicated to seeing the project through to completion. In order to encourage cooperation among the surrounding nations in exchanging and implementing best practices, the Chairman further proposed that HEC support Pakistan’s hosting of the World Bank’s upcoming South Asia Regional Cooperation event on quality assurance.
The kick-off meeting was chaired by Mr. Awais Ahmed, the project coordinator, and Dr. Zia Ul-Qayyum, the executive director of HEC. The project missions serve as checkpoints for the project, track progress, and record lessons learned, all of which the executive director emphasized as being crucial. According to him, careful observation is being made to ensure that the project aims are met on schedule.
The WB and HEC teams evaluated each component’s development. The parties reached a consensus over the subsequent measures that will guarantee that every chance is taken to bolster the higher education industry for the duration of the project. According to the HEDP team’s presentation, 91% of the project is now complete.
42 research grants, including 43 first-ever public sector innovator seed funding, have been given out by the initiative. It has enabled the nationwide rollout of the new Undergraduate Education Policy (UEP), trained 4428 faculty members of associated colleges in its use, and set up 41 quality improvement cells inside the affiliated colleges.
Additionally, the project improved Pakistan Education Research Network’s (PERN) access to 133 more higher education institutions (HEIs).PERN is a high-speed internet package that includes essential instructional software and is administered by HEC for Higher Education Institutions. PERN is currently available on more than 400 HEIs with 100 GB of bandwidth.
Modern data centers, high-performance computing, and reliable student information systems for public university systems are only a few of the massive IT projects for the industry that are being introduced under the project. 204 journal publications, 127 conference publications, 15 patents, 144 research events, seven spinoffs, 24 awards or accolades, 25 tech partnership licenses, and contributions to 17 policy-level developments are just a few of the noteworthy project funding outcomes.
Along with conducting a number of capacity-building initiatives, the National Academy of Higher Education (NAHE) trained 196 women leaders in Pakistan, many of whom are currently advancing in the management ranks. The NAHE team also disclosed the three-tier training that HEIs in Pakistan are expected to receive very soon.
Ms. Inga Afanasieva underlined WB’s dedication to this project’s support of Pakistan’s higher education industry. She conveyed her satisfaction with the project’s performance and reiterated her commitment to providing support to important areas during the last year, such as faculty training, associated colleges, NAHE, and university financial autonomy. She urged the project team to increase female participation at all levels while concentrating on enhancing gender participation.
