Rana Tanveer Hussain, Minister of Federal Education and Professional Training, launched the Ph.D. Countries Directory Online System at Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission (HEC) on Tuesday.
The HEC’s traditional Ph.D. Country Directory (PCD) setup has been digitized with the launch of the online system, which can be accessible at ‘eservices.hec.gov.pk/#/pcd,’ to increase efficiency in the PCD registration procedure of Ph.D. scholars in Pakistan.
Chairman HEC Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed, Executive Director HEC Dr. Shaista Sohail, Vice Chancellors of several institutions, and a large number of Ph.D. students attended a ceremony in this regard at the HEC Secretariat.
The PCD Online System, developed by the HEC Higher Education Data Repository with the assistance of Information Technology (IT) and other Divisions, will allow the inclusion of Pakistani Ph.Ds in HEC information via university focal persons in a short amount of time without providing papers or applications in hard form.
Before, the PCD processes involved five steps that took a Ph.D. scholar many months to become a member of Pakistan’s registered Ph.D. community.
Addressing the ceremony, Rana Tanveer Hussain praised the inauguration of the PCD Online System and expressed hope that the development will help Ph.D. students in a hassle-free manner.
He highlighted the need of using technology in institutional operations to make procedures more readily available to everyone. He emphasized the significance of investing in human capital and the role of HEC in creating human resources for the country.
According to the Minister, the growth of higher education and marketable, need-based research are important to a nation’s advancement and prosperity. He recommended institutions create special on-campus environments to promote skill-based education.
He advised universities to improve their financial discipline, collaborate with industry, promote entrepreneurship, and convert their Offices of Research, Innovation, and Commercialization (ORICs) into revenue-generating entities.
Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed, Chairman of HEC, stated that HEC will soon optimize all of its operations and procedures to better serve students, faculty, and the general public and that the HEC degree verification process will be synched with the NADRA database to facilitate authentication.
He highlighted that the goal of this concept is to improve efficiency, quality, and people’s lives. He asked the Vice Chancellors to assist HEC in expediting service delivery to the academic community and students. He stated that HEC is committed to providing the greatest possible services to the nation.
Dr. Shaista Sohail stated in her opening remarks that the launch of the PCD online system within 3 months will accelerate the registration of PhDs since there are now 29300 PhDs in the PCD data.
Previously, Mr. Ghulam Nabi, Director General of HEDR, presented a thorough presentation comparing the traditional PCD released in 2009 with the flagship PCD Online System.
He informed the audience that HEC had educated over 300 university focal people on the new PCD System and had received comments from universities for inclusion. While moving toward a paperless environment, he stated that HEC HEDR would announce the introduction of an online data collecting system, ranking system, data warehousing and analytics, and statistics booklet in the coming months.
