LAHORE, March 21: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) is worried about the federal government’s decision to wind up the HEC as per the 18th Amendment.In a bid to survive the looming crisis, HEC Executive Director Prof Dr Sohail H Naqvi on Monday held a video conference and discussed the issue of winding up of the commission with vice-chancellors and their representatives in various universities across the country.

The HEC is also convening a meeting of vice-chancellors to discuss the issue at its Islamabad office on Saturday.

At the video conference, Prof Naqvi sought recommendations from the vice-chancellors or their representatives to ensure that the HEC survive as an umbrella body at the national level.

Participants in the video conference agreed that the HEC’s job was not to disburse funds among universities alone but to oversee the quality assurance issues and provision of digital resources to the universities. It was also agreed that all universities would be on their own, if the HEC was wound up.

In case of disbandment of the commission, the participants said some institutions would be required to look after disbursement of funds to universities as well as quality assurance issues at provinces. They said such a situation would shoot up the expenses currently being incurred by the HEC.

It is also learnt that a vice-chancellor from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa snubbed a participant’s comment that some provinces lacked capacity to   handle funding and quality assurance issues.

Punjab University faculty of education dean Prof Dr Hafiz Muhammad Iqbal, being a representative of vice-chancellor at the video conference, said every province might have the capacity to manage its affairs but in this age of communication and technology, every university needed to interact with other universities including those in the country and benefit from experiences of each other. He said the exercise could not be done by respective universities at individual level. He said all universities across the country needed an umbrella organisation like HEC to provide a platform for interaction among universities at national level.