ISLAMABAD  - Higher Education Commission (HEC) on Tuesday celebrated its decade long successes toward achieving the goal of providing quality higher education to the students, following the international standards.
An interaction was organised in connection with celebration of 10 years establishment of HEC here with vice chancellors, faculty members and scholars from different parts of country through video conferencing.   
On the occasion, Executive Director HEC, Prof Dr S Sohail H Naqvi said the establishment of the Higher Education Commission HEC in September 2002 has heralded a revolution in higher education in Pakistan.
The HEC has accomplished far more in ten years since achieved in the first 55 years of Pakistan’s existence.
Dr Sohail said that since September 2002, the higher education sector in Pakistan has witnessed the launch of a sea change of initiatives by the Higher Education Commission that have fundamentally altered the higher education landscape.
Change is visible in all the universities and degree awarding institutions in Pakistan. There is excitement in the air in these institutions, and scholars and researchers are beginning to roam the hallways of knowledge once again. “The change is physically manifested in the restored buildings, new classrooms, new laboratories, computers, jogging tracks and state-of-the art libraries”, he added.
He also acknowledged the support of government and people of Pakistan. While highlighting the ten years achievement of higher education sector in last ten years, he informed that as outcome of dedicated hard work by university faulty and support by university administration, six Pakistani universities are now ranked among the top 300 Asian universities while two Pakistani universities are now ranked among the top 300 science and technology institutions of the world.
Other main achievements include spread of higher education to every region of the country with an increase in number of universities campuses in Pakistan from 168 to 258 including the establishment of 41 new universities.
The increase in student enrolment at universities from 330,000 to over a million, increase of percentage women enrolled in universities from 36% to 46%, award of more than 10,000 local and foreign scholarships through a well-defined and transparent mechanism that has made no compromise on merit and award of 2,000 scholarships for the talented youth of Balochistan and Fata are the other accomplishments.
The other achievements include announcement of second phase o 2000 more scholarships and launch of additional 600 MPhil/PhD scholarships exclusively for the students of Balochistan and 8,000 Need Based Scholarship Programmes for financially constrained but talented Pakistani students.
The institutionalisation of a world-class PhD education system requiring publication of journal paper and review of dissertation by at least two internationally renowned scholars in advanced countries and award of 4,850 PhDs over the past decade, far more than the 3,281 PhDs awarded in the first 55 years of Pakistan’s existence was the true reflection of HEC struggle.
During this period, more than 5,000 Pakistani scholars were facilitated to present their research work in leading international conferences abroad. In the field of research, there has been eight-fold increase in international research publications resulting from research work undertaken in Pakistan.
Three times increase in Pakistan’s share of World Research with Pakistan having 0.32 percent of the world’s publications in 2010. More than 16450 Faculty and Management officials of HEIs have been trained through various training programmemes.
In the field of information technology, Pakistan today is a regional leader in ICTs, which other countries are following. The Digital Library provides access to 75 percent of the World’s literature (23,000 e-journals and 45,000 e-books). HEC Video Conference Network is established in all public sector universities by covering 31 cities.
The network is recognised one of the mega interactive networks by having total 79 purpose built e-classroom based videoconference set up.
The vice chancellors, faculty members and scholars highlighted the main developments and success stories in the sector of higher education Pakistan during last ten years. They termed the period as “Decade of Higher Education Excellence”.