Pakistan’s higher education segment is in disaster after the finance ministry backed out on its owed budget for the year 2016-17. More than 60 % development budget for all universities has been cut down. HEC was initially allotted Rs. 21.48 billion but only Rs. 8.42 billion were out during the complete year.
The cut amount was relocated by the government to transportation schemes, leaving the universities and education sector and in total dismay. Contractors are running after vice-chancellors of different universities asking for funds to whole work on under construction buildings.
This is the lowest funds allotment to the HEC since 2004. Mukhtar Ahmed, HEC’s Professor has been trying to keep the structure from failing due to lack of funds.
Lack of Funds
Due to the lack of funds, the HEC slash a lot of significant programs which were vital for higher education’s expansion. One of the essential projects included the training of faculty at top universities by sending them in a foreign country for further studies.
HEC used to send 1,000 students abroad each year so that it could boost its ‘highly-trained faculty’ and carry the ratio of Ph.D. faculty to students from 1:130 to 1:20. That program, though, has distorted and just 250 students were sent abroad previous year.
Rankings of Universities
Federal and provincial governments have also been made complex HEC’s target as 50 new universities have been announced while the hiring of competent faculty isn’t given precedence. Such measures have been stated as shallow since these announcements are made only to get public hold up and make a false delusion that the education sector is getting concentration. This totally contradicts HEC’s program to perk up quality education; relatively it lowers the standards even more.
Research on a decline
International patents have also seen a turn down over the past few years as researchers cannot make safe funding from the HEC. Patents also charge a decent amount of money but the HEC can no longer shore up students for such initiatives. The catastrophe is pretty obvious with the reality that 2015 already had a short amount of global patents at 15, 2016 was even lesser with just one international copyright.
Budget constraints have partial the research section as well. Sources have talked about that projects presented to HEC over a year back are still awaiting endorsement. The agenda which allowed students to have free of charge right to use to urbane tools has also collapsed as HEC can no longer pay the bills. Analyses of this plan have dropped by 90 %.
Digital Library
A digital library plan was initiated in 2005, which integrated 25,000 global journals and 65,000 textbooks. It has also seen a quick turn down as original high-class journals are infrequently added. Due to the deficiency in of funds, lots of other programs by the HEC have been quite a few affected as well.
Multiple Educations Authorities
The issues have been spiraled due to the establishment of provincial education commissions like the ones in Punjab and Sindh. This doesn’t promise well as far as management is worried about three authorities on one subject and all are trying to execute their own regulations on the same universities.
Higher education is typically regarded as a federal subject in order to uphold standards across the whole state and to make sure international equality of degrees, quality assurance, and national planning.
Yet the Supreme Court was in opposition to the establishment of provincial education commissions but it was unnoticed by the provincial governments.
This is not just shameful for the present government which has failed to carry on its promises for the education segment but also goes on to show the skewed priorities. The government prefers to pay out more money on laptops, roads, and buses than it does on education, water and health all across the country.
