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Professors to earn more than ministers: Atta
KARACHI, Sept 7: Under the new tenure programme approved by the prime
minister two days ago, remunerations of university professors will be increased
on the basis of their performance and Pakistan will become the only country in
the world where a professor will be paid more than a federal
minister.
This was stated by the chairman of the Higher Education
Commission (HEC), Dr Attaur Rehman, at a press conference on Thursday at the HEC
office in the University of Karachi.
He said that this step would help
reverse the brain drain of young people leaving the country. Highlighting the
government's education policies, Dr Atta said that the government had decided to
promote research activities in 13 areas of science and technology such as
agriculture, fishing and engineering.
He said that the HEC had come up
with 4,000 e-books of around 220 publishers on various subjects that could be
accessed by the public sector institutions and its students for free while the
private sector institutions would have to pay a nominal fee to avail the
facility.
Informing the audience about scholarships, the HEC chairman
said that Rs35 billion had been allocated for scholarships and this year the
number of students had been increased from 25 to 1,000 and apart from that 500
foreign faculty members had been hired on a long as well as on a short term
basis.
Referring to the tenure track system for universities' professors,
he said that the universities under this system would give advertisements in
newspapers and all the applications would then be assessed by the foreign staff
and faculty if selected. This system would be applicable to the posts of
assistant professor to professor, he added.
"However, those who make
impressive progress and get selected due to their extraordinary performance will
benefit from it," he said.
Dr Atta said that the salary of an assistant
professor would be increased from Rs80,000 to Rs162,000, that of a associate
professor from Rs120,000 to Rs225,000 and that of a professor from Rs180,000 to
Rs312,000. Dawn
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