THE universities and Degree Awarding Institutes (DAIs) are mandated for knowledge creation and sharing, building economies and leadership at all levels.

These facts signify that need for higher education is expanding and worth attracting for the institutes of higher education across the country with excellent research and learning culture to sharpen the capabilities of the scholars in quantitative and qualitative terms.

To divert brain drain into brain gain, imports into exports and establish a country on the sound footing of self reliance are the key indicators for the progress of institutes of higher education. The cooperation between two institutes results into productive research, yielding dividends for the nation and Higher Education Commission (HEC) has promoted this culture with a clear cut agenda.

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Since its inception in 2002, HEC has launched different programs and initiatives to achieve SMART (specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and time bound targets) through diversified Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). All the Agricultural Universities including the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad (UAF) as prominent Agri Research Institute and Technology Transfers Centers are engaged in mandatory responsibilities vis-a-vis HRD and agricultural research in real terms despite of all the limiting factors, like optic number of supporting staff per scientist, low ratio of scientists with PhD and insufficient operational funds, e.g only 0.2% of the total GDP is allocated to Agriculture sector instead of 1% as recommended by the National Commission on Agriculture in 1988.

At international level, it is recognised that for effective research, the operational funds must be more than 40% of the total budget of the universities.

Unfortunately in Pakistan, the operational funds with universities are generally less then 2%.

Along with promotion of higher education, the emphasis to college and school education with agricultural subjects must be at priority agenda. The agricultural sector of the economy could hardly sustain growth without the support of highly qualified and professionally sound manpower with a commitment. In this perspective, UAF through sheer cooperation of HEC has promoted research culture in the university.

The number of PhDs scholars at UAF increased from 300 to 1593 between 2001-2017, overall student enrollment also increased from 7372 to 25511 from 2002 to 2017.

Indigenous PhD fellowship programs launched by HEC have not only supported intelligent and meritorious students, but also promoted poor scholars to transform their dreams of PhD into reality. Presently 288 PhD scholars are availing the facility of HEC funded fellowship, while 541 have passed out with distinction and are serving in the different segments of the society.

This initiative of HEC has gained wide popularity among the aspirants of higher education, where UAF is an attractive market for local, private and foreign players. Highly motivated, committed and self driven faculty at UAF have been selected (270) as HEC approved PhD supervisors by following uniform measuring yard stick and criteria designed by HEC. The UAF has established a research culture at the campus and research funding from diversified sources is more than 2.6 billion, where one third is of international funding and one third sponsored by HEC.

Universities have attained a new shape during the last 15 years under the financial and technical assistance provided by HEC for diversified degree programs and UAF has elevated its 89 degree programs to 168 for BS, Masters, MPhil and PhD. It has not only opened new avenues for research but also helped to solve intricate problems of the farming community. Before the inception of HEC, research publications were confined and restricted to libraries but due to regular monitoring of scientific journals, facility by PERN internet connectivity, plagiarism check and incentive to best cited papers, UAF has boosted research publications from 22 in the year 2002 to 788 with citation from 93 to 10907 in 2016, respectively.

On the basis of research, UAF has been included in the list of top 100 universities of the world.

The attainment of this honor with an accelerated pace in ranking is a candid depiction of hard work by academia at UAF. Rankings influence our view about academia and its prestige besides affecting institutional & personal decision-making process.

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Education has become a top priority agenda in emerging knowledge based economies and we are looking forward for partnerships with world leading universities on the basis of their performance worldwide. The ranking of a university is one of the most important factors considered by overseas students when choosing where to study. Across the globe, different agencies are engaged in ranking process with different parameters. In this perspective, Times Higher Education World University ranking has placed UAF at 802nd worldwide, while Shanghai Rankings ranked at 127th in the world.

The QS world university ranking for UAF is 90th in the world, and HEC has placed UAF as the number one university in Pakistan in agricultural sector.

Technology development including effective agricultural implements, post harvest technologies, value addition to primary products and a need base services sector are essential to attract and retain youth in farming. HEC has rightly and timely picked up the vision of Technology Development Fund (TDF), technology parks, business incubation centres and technology innovation centres to strengthen academia industry linkages.

Recently, out of the 32 TDF projects, UAF got a lion’s share (11 plus 1 projects with more than 100 million rupees) on competitive basis focused on commercialisation of technologies. Distances between the academia and industry were shortened by providing consultancies and technology incubation at BICs where UAF maintained its prestigious position by providing 23 consultancies and 30+ incubated companies. HEC has contributed at each and every step.

UAF has launched a series of activities like energy conservation, hepatitis and congo virus awareness campaign.

Other initiatives included kids school health promotion in rural areas, growing vegetables in peri-urban areas, rural entrepreneurship through cooperation, capacity building of farmers about agri-inputs and date palm cultivation for agri-entrepreneurship of small farmers.

The HEC has promoted research culture through financers from post graduate research (indigenous PhD fellowship), financers for research analysis (access to scientific instrumentation), research authentication, augmentation and articulation (plagiarism check), research publication (support to scientific journals ), access to scientific information (support to departmental libraries and digitalising libraries) and research connectivity (Pakistan Education and Research Network-PERN).

The qualitative transformation of research findings are in the form of patents, commercialised products and services for the benefit of end users. It was a time before sensitising the HEC when concept of IP rights and commercialisation was in infancy and researchers were reluctant to get patents of their innovative ideas.

UAF is not only facilitating researchers for filing of patents, but also supporting them in terms of finances. There are 7 patents on the credit of the university, while 15 are in different stages of approval.

Research findings are not to be confined and restricted to research thesis or research articles to be kept in the libraries, these must be translated into goods and services for the benefit of the society at large.

Under this philosophical approach, HEC has established 20 Business Incubation Centers (BICs) and 51 ORICs in the universities. UAF is one of them with the aim to inculcate entrepreneurial skills among the students for changing their mind sets to become job providers than job seekers.

Under the umbrella of BIC, 27 incubated companies are in place at UAF, whereas 24 out of them have been graduated with a number of startups. UAF-HEC-PEP tri-parties agreement has entered into an execution as student startup business centres where UAF as pioneer has awarded seed money to 4 startups.

Strategic framework for research ecosystem demands the identification of core research issues, building of expertise by strong research capabilities, interaction among the researchers and adequate research funds for problem solving research. HEC expanded its vision by expanding 59 Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) to 188 during the last 15 years.

It is only possible if there is equitable access to quality education of international standards, research areas are well defined, allocation of funds for quality research are adequate, a well established mechanism for the publication of research outcomes, a convenient system for research commercialisation, readily available industry to take up the research based marketable products and availability of the product for the end user on sustainable basis. HEC has taken numerous initiatives to achieve its targets through key performance indicators, hiring of services of consultants for third party evaluation and incentivising doers and non doers.

The UAF is the only university in Pakistan catering to the rural community by allocating 75% seats from all districts of the Punjab.

The HEC has launched a series of scholarships (US need based, Japanese need based and HEC need based) for meritorious and resource poor students of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs which has opened new avenues in the higher education.

Under faculty development program, HEC has provided not only funds to the scholars for perusing their degrees in the technologically advanced countries, but also facilitated them to attend scientific workshops and conferences by providing travel grants which has enhanced the exposure of the university.

The list of success stories can only be wrapped up in the following few lines: HEC has done matchless job under the limited resources to promote higher education in Pakistan and broaden the vision of the community to think about the importance of higher education.

This letter was written by Prof. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal Zafar who is the Vice Chancellor of the University of Agriculture Faisalabad. He can be contacted at vc@uaf.edu.pk