K-P varsities’ autonomy may be curtailed

The provincial government is mulling a law which could greatly curtail the autonomy of university syndicates while lowering the eligibility criteria for vice-chancellors (VCs).

The amendment bill is yet to be presented in the provincial assembly.

The autonomy of the higher educational institutions has been taken away as it has been suggested to end the university syndicate.

The government has also altered the laws related to university employees and brought them under the government servant rules.The Express Tribune has learnt that the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had passed the University Act Amendment Bill 2016, after making certain changes in a similar law which had been passed by their predecessors in 2012.

Under it, the service tenure of a VC had reduced from four to three, while the retirement age had been increased to 65 years-of-age.

However, in a new set of proposed amendments, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Universities Amendment Bill 2020, the provincial government has decided to restore four-year service tenures for vice-chancellors while the age limit has been brought down to 61 years-of-age.

Further, the government, through the proposed amendments, has decided to remove the post of Pro-VC. The post had created in the 2016 law to handle affairs of the varsities in the absence of a VC for different reasons.

Now, the K-P governor, who is the chancellor of all public universities, has been empowered to appoint an official of the respective university as an acting VC. Moreover, the law will allow the governor to also appoint government servants from either the Provincial Management Service (PMS) or the Provincial Administrative Service (PAS).

Further, the proposed new amendments also suggest bringing the university syndicate under government services rules, effectively ending their autonomy.

Meanwhile, the eligibility criteria for the seat of VC has been lowered too. A Master’s degree holder with 17 years of experience in the field will now be eligible to run a university. By contrast, the current criteria require that the candidate have at least 17 years of teaching experience, a doctorate, and must have authored at least 15 publications.

Sources told The Express Tribune that the amendments had been made allegedly to pave way for some bureaucrats into the education field. On lowering the criteria for VCs, it added that a departmental committee formed to review the eligibility of VCs mostly comprised of government officers from PMS.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1^st, 2020.