ISLAMABAD, Mar 2 (APP): Federal Minister for Planning Development & Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal here on Thursday chaired a meeting to discuss the performance audit framework & pending Higher Education Commission (HEC) initiatives.
Chairman HEC Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad and senior officials of the ministry were also present in the meeting while member S&T, Dr. Najeeb Ullah briefed the forum on various ongoing and pending projects of the Science & Technology sector as well.
The Federal Minister stressed that the Higher Education Commission (HEC) should ensure quality standards in the higher education sector in light of the six parameters and associated KPIs for standardization.
These include quality and impact of research and innovation; university-industry linkages, technology enablement, corporate governance, community service, and graduate quality and employability.
The Federal Minister directed the concerned authorities to create corporate-level innovation labs in various universities and to provide all the facilities in the existing innovation labs.
The federal minister further directed HEC to include entrepreneurship and exports-lead growth as course subjects making it part of degree programs in all universities to enhance capacity of the students.
During the meeting, projects related to science and technology under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) were also deliberated in detail.
The minister assured of all possible support related to the approval process and release of funds for the proposed projects.