Undermining universities
AS university teachers across Pakistan received their pay cheques for July, the first month of the new financial year 2025-26, they discovered that their take-home pay was considerably lower than what it was in May or June this year. If they did not receive a raise at the start of the financial year, it is possible that their income may have even been reduced by 25 per cent compared to what they received earlier this year thanks to the removal of a rebate that university teachers and professors used to get. The government had earlier announced that the rebate would be withdrawn because, according to officials, the IMF ‘rejected proposals of the FBR to allow [the] 25 per cent tax rebate to teachers and researchers from July 1, 2025’. Why bother having a government when the IMF runs economic policy?
Good faculty are singularly the most essential requirement for any university in order to be able to deliver quality education. The measures taken by the government, or by their minders at the IMF, will dissuade numerous qualified and competent men and, particularly, women, wanting to join the teaching profession in Pakistan. While the lack of quality faculty is a perennial problem in Pakistan, it is hardly the only one and there are numerous other challenges that undermine higher education.
While many commentators have expressed surprise that there are no Pakistani universities in the top tiers of the QS Ranking list, a global mechanism to assess research and teaching at universities — a methodology which has its own particular problems — what would have been surprising is if there had, indeed, been any Pakistani university in the top 350 of the world. There are around 270 institutions of higher learning that the HEC accounts for. Of these, around 170 are in the public sector, with the rest of them private universities. However, a huge predominance of such universities, if they can even be called that, give degrees rather than education. Pakistan’s so-called universities, for the most part, are degree-awarding institutions rather than centres and institutions of learning, ideas and critical thinking.
Almost all university administrators in Pakistan bemoan the fact that their institutions face serious financial constraints. This is true and there is little doubt that the financial resources made available by the HEC to universities have not increased in real terms in many years. However, given the very poor state of education and what universities deliver and produce, perhaps it is wiser not to waste more money on continuously poor outcomes. An increased budget to universities by the government would not necessarily produce better students; more buildings, certainly, but not quality students.
Perhaps it is wiser not to waste more money on continuously poor outcomes.
The few excellent universities which exist in Pakistan, some of which are in the private sector, are particularly dependent on student fees to be able to run their establishments, rather than on public handouts. As much as 60 to 65pcof their incomes arise from fees, and since they have the ability to raise their fees every year, they can ensure that they run their enterprises in a way which can provide better quality education. This also allows them to pay more to their faculty and attract better teachers.
Constituency-level and populist politics in Pakistan, and the fact that higher education is a very lucrative business, has given rise to the frayed belief that each electoral constituency or town must have its own university, regardless of the fact that there just aren’t enough good university teachers to go around. Who can forget the last day of the previous parliament, the 15th National Assembly, in August 2023, when as many as 25 universities, most of which were private, received approval? Those who teach at universities warned that such collusion between influential and rich ‘education investors’ and parliamentarians would spell greater disaster for higher education in Pakistan. Not surprisingly, such concerns have proven true.
Of the 270 or so universities in Pakistan, even by very generous standards perhaps 50 or so, at best, actually provide decent education, where students are taught to think, to be creative, to learn some professional skills — all in order to be able to find some kind of employment. Graduate unemployment exists not because there aren’t enough jobs but because students have not been sufficiently trained or educated.
A major cause for the continuing poor performance of higher education is also, ironically, the regulator and overseer of higher education in Pakistan, ie, the HEC. The HEC bureaucracy does not have the ability or scale to oversee the 270 universities in Pakistan. Worse still, they treat all universities alike: the 50 or so better institutions are clubbed together with the 100 or so least developed, poorest, ones.
One major intervention needed in the administration of the higher education sector is to distinguish between the different quality of universities. Universities are not alike and different categories need to be regulated differently, some perhaps not at all. If the HEC would leave better-quality universities to their own devices, not interfering in how these universities function, they would do us a great service. Say, a four-tiered ‘league table’, where struggling universities are supported much more, both administratively and financially, in order to raise their standards, would work better. The top 50 or so universities, which have some measure of quality, should be allowed to become more autonomous and efficient without much meddling. A once in five years certification could ensure that they meet well-defined standards.
Another way forward is to ensure that no further universities are constructed in every corner of the country. Instead, the focus should be on consolidating the existing, better ones. Ensuring quality, rather than constructing more substandard buildings with the ‘university’ banner attached to them, could be the way forward.
The so-called ‘demographic dividend’ with Pakistan’s youth bulge will, in a decade or two, be a middle-aged burden. Those fortunate enough to make it to university deserve a far better future.
The writer is a political economist and heads the IBA, Karachi. The views are his own and do not represent those of the institution.
Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2025