HEC chairperson decries low education budget for Sindh

He stresses that the government ought to take steps to lift HEC and universities from a financial crunch

HYDERABAD: Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairperson Dr Tariq Banuri has said that Pakistan’s higher education budget allocation is even lower than that of African countries. “An estimated Rs150,000 is spent on higher education per student in Pakistan which is very low,” he observed, while addressing educationists at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET) Water Center in Jamshoro on Monday.

The vice chancellors and teaching faculty of Sindh University (SU), Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) and Sindh Agriculture University (SAU), besides MUET, attended the event. The chairperson said that HEC had demanded Rs105 billion for the budget from the federal government but it was provided only Rs65 billion. “A big cut has been made in the higher education budget.”

He stressed that the government ought to take steps to lift HEC and universities from financial crunch. Banuri informed that the HEC has embarked upon overhauling the curriculum and for carrying out higher education reforms. “The HEC has banned academic programmes of all such private and public universities which have reduced themselves to factories producing degrees and diplomas.” 

Published in The Express Tribune, October 1^st, 2019.