Misusing HEC scholarships

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has served legal notices to Pakistani students who travelled abroad for graduate studies but never returned home to work, in breach of their contracts. Other students violated their contracts by failing to complete their doctoral studies in the allotted time. The HEC contends that the students are being supported on taxpayers’ money and should promptly return home. In truthful terms, a fund set aside for an intended purpose is being misused and, indeed, students should be required to return home.

However, in attempting to track down the students, the addresses found on scholarship applications have been declared false by the HEC. Despite this, the HEC maintains that its selection process is rigorous and that it chooses candidates after careful review. What kind of scrutiny is practised if even the addresses on applications are found to be false? This is a matter over which the HEC should be questioned — and asked to improve upon for the future.

Moreover, the Commission should communicate more with foreign graduate schools beforehand, as several students have claimed unfit conditions upon reaching their institutions, including one student who could not find a graduate adviser upon arriving at his university, while another cited poor laboratory conditions in which to do research. Evidently, there are flaws in the scholarship programme and its selection process.

Nonetheless, the contract required that students return home upon completion of their studies, which would have helped prevent further brain drain from the country, a phenomenon that has been occurring for the past several decades. The initiative was a positive one — to have students bring back their acquired knowledge and skills and share it with fellow citizens to help move Pakistan forward. As such, the students should be tracked and demanded to return home.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 11^th, 2013.