ISLAMABAD, May 18: The government has decided to earmark 4.1 per cent of the development budget for higher education in 2012-13, mostly for maintaining and rehabilitating the state-run universities in the country.

In absolute terms, the allocation for the Higher Education Commission will be Rs14.509 billion as against the revised estimate of Rs14 billion for the current fiscal year.

This means that higher education will get about a half billion rupees more in the new financial year, not for new higher scholarships but for non-development projects.

Official documents available with Dawn showed that the HEC, which has shelved many projects because of paucity of funds, had sought Rs22 billion to complete its ongoing projects, particularly scholarship schemes for PhD students.

The HEC has not proposed any new scheme, but has earmarked an amount of Rs2.874 billion for stipend of students who are studying in various universities in Europe and the US.

The remaining Rs11.635 billion will be spent on improving infrastructure, acquiring new equipment and setting up new departments in public sector universities.

An amount of Rs625 million will be spent on PhD fellowships for 5,000 scholars, Rs1.494 billion on overseas scholarships for MS and MPhil leading to PhD in selected fields and Rs200 million on post-doctoral fellowship programme, an amount of Rs155 million overseas scholarship scheme for MS, M.Phil and Ph.D, Rs28.789 million for MS and M.Phil leading to Ph.D scholarships in engineering, natural and basic sciences, humanities and social sciences for teachers of weaker universities.

An amount of Rs350.42 million has been allocated for indigenous PhD fellowships for 5,000 scholars, HEC phase-II.

Balochistan is the only province where HEC’s funding declined substantially and approximately a few million rupees were allocated for rehabilitation of seven to 10 state-owned universities and departments in the province.

Contrary to this, the federal capital will get funds for more than 17 departments, universities in the next year development budget; mostly to be spent on NUST and Comsats universities.

The second province to get low priority in higher education was Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where only 20 universities or departments were provided nominal funds for rehabilitation and capacity strengthening.

Punjab left other provinces behind by allocating more funds for rehabilitation of more than 50 departments or universities, especially the universities in the constituency of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

More than 25 departments or universities have been allocated funds in Sindh, mostly for universities in Karachi.