The brains we build and lose
Pakistan’s investment in human resources and its persistent brain-drain constitute a cyclic paradigm: we train talent, yet fail to harness it at home. The utilisation of human resources is largely missing in the country. Highly skilled Pakistanis are being employed elsewhere, performing excellently, and raising Pakistan’s international reputation. But the educational policy makers has failed to create an ecosystem that can retain and deploy these brains toward industrial development. In Pakistan, we have invested heavily in human capital by sending thousands abroad for higher education learning modern research, but strategies for getting real impactful role of these trained brains is still missing even in policy discussions. Universities, being the highest institutions for research, should feed industry with innovation and drive economic growth. Because innovation involves risk, the government must compel or incentivise industry to share it (for example via tax rebates or matching funds) to bridge the gap between research and commercialisation.
An industrial revolution cannot be achieved without highly skilled workers, but the cycle is broken: we produce PhDs and the quality of research improves, yet the economy and system lack the capacity to retain them. To retain brilliant minds, industry must be connected structurally with academia by offering clear pathways and funded opportunities. But who should do that — HEC, ministries, universities, or ORIC offices?
Before devicing any policy first step would be to identify the real need of highly skilled brains and casual relaitonship should be established, like how a higher-quality and safer food supply, for instance, could reduce cholera and related health burdens, lessening strain on hospitals. Similarly, local production of pharmaceutical ingredients would cut import dependence. Due to lack of innovative safety measures, country’s largest import remained sodium benzoite to control bacteria and fungi contamination in consumer products including food and skin care. Innovative solutions to electricity supply would reduce line losses and ultimately lower consumer bills. Similarly, a common industrial ingredient in consumer product citric acid is being imported even in presence of advanced AI based systhetic biology.
A task force established by the government 25 years ago had identified the key areas for devleopments, but also aimed to foster academic progress through human resource development, its reports recommended a large increase in public funding and institutional autonomy. In light of this, during the Musharraf era, many Pakistanis were permitted to acquire PhDs at advanced universities abroad by governement fundings through Higher Education Commission (HEC) has been a major driver of investment in human resources through overseas and indigenous scholarship schemes aimed at building a more educated society. Since 2002, HEC’s overseas schemes produced thousands of PhD (HEC lacks proper record of PhD scholars it finances Commission has awarded over 10,962 indigenous and foreign scholarships costing billions of rupees).
The majority returned to country as post‐doctoral researchers because salaries at that time were relatively competitive. As most of them were place in higher education institutions as faculty, they produced internationally reputed knowledge and country got international recognition in knowledge creation. In 2018, Pakistan topped the list of fastest growth in research output, with rises of 21 percent (Pakistan and Egypt had highest rises in research output in 2018; Global production of scientific papers hit an all-time high this year, estimates show, with emerging economies rising fastest).
Similarly, these well-trained PhDs mostly placed in univeristies have successfully created the epicentres for research ecosystem at higher-education institutions. Enabled youth not only earn PhD degrees locally but they can compete internationally and win scholarships even without the need for local funding. Pakistani students won most Erasmus Mundus scholarships for four consecutive years; in 2025 114 Pakistani students, including 66 females — represented nearly 58 percent of the cohort (HEC report).
But this innovative seedling work is not being transformed into innovative industrial solutions because of two factors. In contrast to vision of policy makers; HEC’s bureaucratic structure has gradually encroached on university autonomy — rather than steering innovation priorities or identifying national problem domains, HEC has often defaulted into compliance and auditing roles, weakening research direction. All development projects inherently have broader prospective impact, but currently there is a mismatch between institution creation and research domain planning. Problem-based research should be the foundation for granting financial autonomy to universities and enabling professors to launch start-ups. But problem domains should be identified via expert consultants and national planning, not solely left to individual researchers who might direct funds toward building labs rather than solving real problems. However, university expansion was limited by budgetary constraints, and industry’s capacity to absorb PhDs remained extremely narrow — many local industries were content with packaging, assembly, and low-innovation operations (e.g. pharmaceuticals, food processing) rather than deep R&D.
Industrial revolution is a complex process, and self-sustainability can only be achieved by compelling industry to innovate for the quality and safety of consumer products. This goal can only be realised through the active involvement of academia working as part of research consortia. The Triple Helix model — linking industry, academia, and government — can help define the role of each partner in solving research problems. Research funding should be directed to such consortia based on specific, pre-identified national challenges outlined by the Planning Commission, rather than asking individual researchers to propose their own topics. This approach will ensure tangible and outcome-oriented results.
The formulation of quality and safety standards must be strictly monitored, with parameters grounded in the latest scientific findings and continuously integrated into legislation. The Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA), as the key player in this process, must remain independent of industrial influence. Strong and transparent monitoring of consumer product quality by government agencies will help build public trust in local products. Meanwhile, industries must be compelled to align with detailed, well-formulated rules and regulations supported by law. One effective strategy to ensure compliance could be regular audits and certification reviews led by independent technical accredation bodies.
Nevertheless human resources were trained, and a “bumper” number of PhDs were produced. The directory of PhDs from Pakistan spans domains from health and life sciences to manufacturing, engineering, AI, and more (as per HEC and ORIC networks). But bridging those skills to funded, impactful, adoptable industry projects remains a major gap.
In academia, the Tenure Track System (TTS) was introduced in 2007 to retain talent by offering performance-linked salaries (USD 1,333 for assistant professors; USD 2,000 and USD 3,000 for associate and full professors). Over time, however, inflation has eroded real earnings. By 2025, typical TTS salaries stand at ~USD 1,426 for professors, USD 950 for associate professors, USD 834 for assistant professors, and USD 634 for lecturers.
Under this structure, a TTS professor pays ~USD 233 monthly in taxes, while a counterpart under the old BPS pay scale (for the same grade) pays only ~USD 113. Under such economic stress, many professors lose interest in research; having international exposure, opened up vision, an easy comparison of takehome salary, that is not even comparable to even a cook’s salary in France (~ €1,900), making it psychologically untenable to persist in academia even on lower than a cook’s salary. A USD 3,000 salary once seemed high but today is effectively halved in purchasing power. Without enforceable standards, credible demand, and adoption pipelines in industry, creating human resources remains only half the job — the other half is creating opportunities to create a selfsustainable research-innovation-development ecoystem in the coutnry.
Therefore, due to these facts, Pakistan’s most reliable export remains human capital, while many of its product exports are rejected at international borders due to safety and quality issues. For instance, European border control systems frequently flag Pakistani food and agricultural consignments for pesticide residues or aflatoxin levels. (Examples appear routinely in RASFF notifications).
Going forward, to create real markets for PhDs and highly qualified professionals, we must restrict overreliance on imported ready-made solutions and promote intermediate industries that translate research into components and services. Local production reduces raw material costs, cuts fraud risk, and improves equity and public health. For instance, lysine (an amino acid essential in poultry feed, because wheat meal is deficient in it) is largely imported — building domestic capacity would engage chemists, bioprocess engineers, QC experts, and regulatory professionals. Skilled workers could be absorbed across production lines, quality control, accreditation councils, and monitoring. Universities must shift from being talent sinks to being engines of solutions directly coupled to industry problems. To break the cycle of “train then export,” national problem lists should be defined; funding schemes should mandate industry — university collaboration with risk sharing (tax incentives, procurement preferences, challenge funds); and agencies must be held accountable for adoption and impact. Local problems solved with local solutions is the only sustainable path to ending brain drain and building a truly prosperous innovation-led Pakistan.
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer