Quality Enhancement Cells
Background
In recent years it has become an obligation that institutions of higher education demonstrate the effectiveness of their academic programs in providing high quality education that positively impacts the stakeholders. this has led the Higher Education Commission to develop methods for assessing the quality of academic programs.
With the establishment of Quality Assurance Agency at Higher Education Commission it was decided in the NQAC meeting that Quality Enhancement Cells will be established at all universities to strengthen the internal quality assurance process with a special focus on quality of higher education to fill the gap between the prevailing and the desired status of quality education.
Introduction
The issue of quality ha
s been identified as the major issue confronting the higher education sector in the Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF). Therefore, to enhance the quality of output and efficiency of the higher education learning systems, a mechanism of establishment of QECs has been developed by the Quality Assurance Committee to improve the standards of quality of higher education in a systematic way with uniformity across country.
In 2006-07 the Quality Enhancement Cells (QECs) have been established at ten public sector universities, where as in 2007-08 twenty more QECs were established in the public sector universities for improvement of their academic, teaching and learning standards. The QEC family is being extended to another fifteen public sector, fifteen private sector universities in 2009-10 and twenty four in public sector universities in 2010-11.