Pakistan has entered the new year with cautious economic optimism after having narrowly avoided a financial collapse. While the government of Mian Shehbaz Sharif deserves appreciation for stabilising key indicators, economic recovery will remain fragile unless it is supported by structural reforms in higher education. No modern economy has sustained growth without a globally competitive university system.
Pakistan today faces degree inflation, outdated curricula, weak market relevance, persistent brain drain, low-impact research, and an obsession with rankings. These shortcomings reflect a deeper failure of governance. The centralised model of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, which was useful in 2002 when universities were institutionally weak, has now become a bureaucratic constraint on innovation and growth in many ways.
Without any exaggeration, HEC currently operates as a super-ministry. It recognises universities and then attests their degrees, regulates curricula, defines journal rankings, controls promotions, and allocates funding. Such concentration of power has produced compliance-driven universities rather than centres of intellectual excellence. By contrast, successful higher education systems in the global north do not treat universities as bureaucratic sub-units. They rely on independent, discipline-based accreditation bodies while granting institutions academic, financial, and strategic autonomy.
Just as it is not the role of government to run businesses, it is not the role of HEC to micro-manage universities. Its proper function is primarily to regulate the system that governs it.
Pakistan urgently needs legally autonomous accreditation councils for the sciences, humanities, medicine, engineering, and social sciences. Some already exist, but they must operate independently rather than as extensions of HEC. In this model, HEC would act as a regulatory referee to ensure quality, transparency, and data-driven accountability.
The centralised model of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, which was useful in 2002 when universities were institutionally weak, has now become a bureaucratic constraint on innovation and growth in many ways.
Public funding must also be restructured. If the state is serious about shaping Pakistan’s intellectual, economic, and technological future, university funding must increase and be depoliticised. A formula-based allocation system may be implemented to reward enrollment, faculty quality, internationalisation, industry linkages, community engagement, and research output. Development funding must be tied to the performance of a university on measurable parameters.
Vice-chancellor appointments must likewise be depoliticised. Leadership should be selected through transparent and merit-based procedures and evaluated through measurable performance indicators for the renewal of tenure. A four-year timeline for a vice-chancellor to transform a university into a centre of excellence appears unrealistic. Ironically, by the time he or she implements a plan to structure the system, his or her tenure is over. Therefore, a vice-chancellor must be given at least two terms to transform a university into a centre of excellence.
Beyond successfully complying with accreditation bodies, universities need to rethink their knowledge ecosystems. They should establish an institutional printing press and partner with global publishers, such as Cambridge, De Gruyter, Elsevier, Emerald, Oxford, Routledge, SAGE, Springer, Taylor and Francis, and Wiley for journals, books, and digital resources. Pakistan’s local journal system has failed to achieve global visibility and quality. Research must move into international scholarly networks rather than remain trapped in insular indigenous publication cycles. Faculty and students must have reliable access to high-quality academic resources to strengthen both their research and teaching.
University libraries increasingly lack the financial capacity to acquire contemporary academic resources, resulting in visibly underutilised and poorly stocked facilities on many campuses. In response to these constraints, libraries often rely on providing informal digital copies of journal articles and books to students and faculty who request them. This practice, while driven by necessity, places institutions in a legally and ethically precarious position, as it frequently violates copyright and licensing agreements that would otherwise require institutional access to digital resources.
Universities must also respond to the demands of the twenty-first century. Beyond admission slogans such as AI-Powered University, Artificial intelligence must be ethically integrated into research, teaching, and institutional strategy. The universities, which are slow to adapt to technological changes and promote digital literacy, eventually fail to prepare their graduates for this increasingly changing world.
At the same time, the social sciences and humanities must be restored to the core of university education. Fields such as academic writing, philosophy, professional psychology, ethics, media communication, art & design, and civic education are not luxuries. They cultivate critical thinking, civic, and professional responsibilities. Universities must become spaces where Pakistan’s political, legal, environmental, social, and psychological challenges are rigorously debated and publicly addressed for the development and implementation of robust policies.
Universities in the global north did not become highly ranked by chasing ranking tables. They built institutional autonomy. They developed merit-based faculty systems that attract global talent. They transformed the role of faculty from classroom instructors into research-producing scholars whose work circulates internationally. Moreover, they valued their faculty members not as service providers in a digitally surveilled, time-bound workplace, but as agents of change. They integrated their programs with the industry to produce graduates required for increasingly changing job markets.
Reforming higher education must be a central government resolution for 2026. In so doing, it can either reform HEC into a modern, trust-based regulator that empowers autonomous and globally connected universities, or it can continue producing degrees without development and research without relevance.
Economic recovery without academic reform is a deception. National development cannot be sustained through political rhetoric or short-term fiscal measures; it needs to be grounded in a robust higher education system that produces creative, innovative, and skilled human capital. Pakistan will not rise on borrowed money but on universities that are free to think, teach, and lead.
Muhammad Shaban Rafi is a Professor of English at Riphah International University, Lahore, and a lead guest editor at Emerald and Springer Publishing. Ayesha Saddiqa is an Assistant Professor of English at the Government Graduate College for Women, Samanabad, Lahore.
The first author is a Professor of English at Riphah International University, Lahore. He is a lead guest editor at Emerald and Springer publishing.
The second author is an Assistant Professor of English at Govt. Graduate College for Women, Samanabad, Lahore