KARACHI, April 24: The Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Associations (FAPUASA) has urged the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to mend the selection criteria for associate professors and professors in the areas of social sciences.The FAPUASA has once again criticized the criteria set by the HEC for the selection of associate professors and professors at public sector Universities, arguing it could not be applied in areas of social sciences, humanities and arts.
In a letter to the HEC chairman, Dr Attaur Rahman, on Monday, FAPUASA President Sarwar Nasim said that the HEC policies were creating “extreme tension and unrest” among the teachers of social sciences, who believed that the HEC policies were mainly focused on sciences.
According to him, the nature of research in social sciences, humanities and arts was entirely different from sciences as in the former, research advisers cannot claim credit for the research that their students do while the idea for research usually comes from the students. Claiming credit for a student's research amounts to plagiarism, which is a serious academic offence; he said.
“Advisers in the field of science claim credit for the research actually done by their students. This is the reason that number of publications of scientists tends to be higher than researchers in the field of social sciences, humanities, and arts” he maintained.
He argued that papers in sciences were usually co-authored while in other disciplines this practice was quite rare while the number of research journals for social sciences, humanities and arts was usually less than those of sciences and it reduced the opportunities for scholars in these fields to get published.
The FAPUASA president observed that making internationally abstracted/indexed journals mandatory for humanities and arts, especially for disciplines like Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Brahvi, Seraiki, Arabic, and Persian, being taught in the Pakistani varsities had serious problems too.
He said that the FAPUASA appreciated the efforts of the HEC in trying to put the local varsities on the right track but added its concerns were not totally baseless and added that it seems if there was some sort of urgency behind devising the new eligibility criteria.
“We very humbly suggest to you (HEC chairman) that the new eligibility criteria be allowed sufficient time to evolve into the academic and research culture of the local varsities and provide sufficient time to the teachers to come up to the new standards that the HEC wants to set for them” he added. Mr Nasim proposed implementation of the HEC criteria in five years starting from September 2006 and waiving off the condition of national and internationally abstracted/indexed journals.—PPI
