ROLE OF PHYSICAL FACILITIES TO ENCOURAGE THE QUALITY ASSURANCE PRACTICES: A SURVEY OF UNIVERSITIES FROM PAKISTAN

The aim the study at hand is to explore the perceptions of teachers, students, and Directors Quality Enhancement Cells’ (QEC’s) about the role of physical facilities towards the encouragement of Quality Assurance Practices (QAP) at University level in Pakistan. Twenty eight universities were randomly selected as fourteen from public sector and fourteen from private sector. Questionnaires were served on respondents as well as semi structured interviews were also conducted. Collected data were analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics techniques. The study revealed that students, teachers and Directors of QEC’s faced a lot of problems and issues without physical facilities. Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), Quality Assurance Department (QAD) and Higher Education Commission Pakistan (HEC) are working consistently to supervise, guide and facilitate the universities of Pakistan for developing quality assurance practices for both public and private sectors. Majority of the students, teachers, and director QECs were of the view that books, research journals, manuals, use of science labs, equipment for experiments, and latest computers were available for teachers and students’ in the universities. Itwas suggested by the students, teachers and QEC directors of universities that Quality Assurance Practices (QAP) can be accelerated by taking into consideration the factors like; provision of sufficient resources; addition of latest software in IT labs and current edition of books along with digital libraries.