islamabad - The Senate body on Federal Education directed the National University of Modern Languages (NUML) administration to take measures for issuance of a PhD degree to one of its scholar within 15 days which has been withheld for the last eight years, Thursday.
The senate standing committee on federal education during public petition hearing was informed that the delay of eight months in publishing of the article in the research journal by student has led to eight years delay in issuance of PhD degree to him.
The student Waqar Zaidi claimed that the non-issuance of his degree was an act of victimization by the university administration.
The meeting was held to hear the public petitions filed by individuals to resolve their longstanding issues with educational departments.
Senator Rana Maqbool Ahmed chaired the committee meeting.
The committee took the petition of Waqar Zaidi, a PhD scholar from the Management Sciences department of NUML University, who alleged that the university administration has deliberately delayed the issuance of his PhD degree for the last eight years, causing damage to his professional and academic career.
The petitioner claimed that despite completing his PhD course work and publishing the article as per requirement, the university administration is not awarding him the degree.
The petitioner was enrolled in the PhD degree program in 2004 and submitted his course work in 2010, while was able to publish his article in the HEC recognized journal after his defense of thesis.
Director Academics NUML Dr. Muhammad Uzair, however, discarded the allegations levelled by the student and informed the committee that the petitioner failed in meeting all requirements for PhD degree in the specified time period.
He said that Waqas Ahmed submitted his PhD thesis on September 24, 2010 without completing a mandatory requirement of published article/acceptance letter from HEC’s recognized research journal. However, his thesis was processed and defense was arranged on March 2, 2016, but the notification of degree was withheld as he could not produce the article/acceptance letter.
The committee was also informed that despite a passage of eight months he could not produce the article /acceptance letter and his case was placed in Board of Advance Studies and Research (BASR) meeting held in 2016 which gave him last six months extension for fulfilment of the requirement of article.
He said that the scholar was issued warning letters to meet the requirement in specified time, but after failing to do so, BASR decided to strike off his name from the university role.
The university official, in his reply, also said that BASR in its 4th meeting struck off all such scholars who could not fulfil any of the requirements for being awarded a degree despite availing extra duration/ extensions.
After issuance of SOR letter, it is not possible to reopen a case of an individual as it will be a violation of rules, compromise the quality of degree and undermine the authority of BASR.
Meanwhile, the committee chairman Rana Maqbool Ahmed expressing concerns on the delay remarked that the higher educational institutions worldwide work to facilitate the students while ‘we are completely opposite of that system for our students’. He directed secretary education M. Arshad Mirza and the university administration to take measures to issue the degree to the student and present the reasons for delay in the process within 15 days.
The committee deferred the hearing of another public petition filed by Javed Iqbal regarding the adoption of alternative way for foreign foundation degree holders addressed to the chairman senate, till next meeting of the committee.
