Universities fail to facilitate research

The allocation of a meagre budget for groundwork thwarts production of academic literature

PESHAWAR:

The quintessential purpose of the higher education system was to advance the progress of the nation through the production of scholarship which can propose contextually sensitive solutions to the specific problems plaguing a country, however, for the university network in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), the journey to progress in research is far from ideal.

Despite the fact that the Higher Education Department, K-P, allocates a billion rupee budget for the varsity network, financial reports from major universities in the northern-province show a miniscule allocation of the hefty budgets for research endeavours, with nine universities awarding no grants for research activities at all including the University of Shangla, University of Agriculture Dera Ismail Khan, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University Peshawar, Women University Mardan , Edwardes College Peshawar, Abbottabad University of Science and Technology, and the University of Engineering and Applied Sciences Swat.“Only 1 per cent of the annual budget of our universities is allocated for research.

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In developed countries, billions are spent on the development of state-of-the-art research labs and the training of researchers. Hence, we see how they have utilised their research and are progressing in the industrial sector. Our academics on the other hand, are too preoccupied with teaching woes and salary delays, to even think about producing scholarship,” said Dr. Muhammad Uzair, a professor of Material Physics at the University of Peshawar, who went on to appeal to the provincial government to allocate a larger share of the higher education budget for research endeavours.

According to documents obtained by the Express Tribune from the Governor’s Secretariat K-P, out of almost 41 billion rupees that were allocated for 34 universities in K-P, during the 2023-24 fiscal year, only 1 billion rupees were granted for research.

The documents further revealed that 27 out of the 34 universities were spending up to 50 per cent of their annual budget not only on salaries and pensions of their staff but also on non-establishment allocation like the hiring of visiting faculty, thesis supervisors, and other contingent staff.

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Such superfluous expenditures reduced the amount of grants available for research and library upgradation, which in developed countries are considered an irrefutable priority.“In developed nations, at least 10 per cent of the annual reserves for higher education are dedicated towards facilitating research activities.

In our country, however, very little importance, if any, is given to research and its implications for encouraging our industrial and economic growth,” regretted Dr Atta ur Rehman, an academic at the University of Peshawar. Dr Rehman also highlighted the need for the government to promote the research efforts of our own local academics by assigning major projects to them instead of favouring foreign researchers.

Speaking to the Express Tribune on the matter, Chancellor of the K-P universities network, Governor Haji Ghulam Ali said, “i will talk to the Higher Education Department K-P regarding the allocation of such a low budget for research. It is a pity that most academics are only focusing on protesting for their salaries and pensions but are not interested in research.”