ISLAMABAD: The country’s higher education sector is all set to face a financial crisis as the federal government has, in principle, decided to impose a major cut on the salaries budget of universities in the upcoming budget.

The government’s decision of cutting down the Higher Education Commission (HEC)’s budget for the fiscal year 2022-23 has perturbed vice chancellors (VCs) of all public sector universities. The VCs, at a virtual meeting on Thursday, expressed serious concerns and said the cut would lead towards a severe crisis in universities which will be unable to pay salaries and pension to their employees.

They demanded that the government should change its plan and provide the required fund to the HEC for the universities.

For HEC has demanded Rs104 billion recurring grant (for salaries and pension related expenditure) for 141 government-run universities in the upcoming financial year.

VCs say HEC should be allocated Rs104bn for 141 public sector varsities in upcoming budget

However, the government, in principle, has decided that the universities will be given only Rs30 billion, which is almost 70pc less than the demand of the HEC and over 45pc less than last year’s allocation of Rs66 billion.

“It must be realised that education is as much important as the country’s defence and security,” said HEC Chairman Dr Tariq Banuri while speaking at the VCs meeting.

“Budget cut, if materialised, would land the higher education sector in a severe crisis,” he said and stressed the need for collectively and clearly making out a case to the government about the loss and consequences of the proposed unprecedented reduction in the funding.

HEC Executive Director Dr Shaista Sohail underlined the challenges of the higher education sector, especially in the face of the proposed budgetary cut. She regretted that the recurring grant allocated to HEC since FY 2017-18 had almost been stagnant and its share as percentage of the GDP kept on declining to the level of 0.14pc in the current fiscal year.

She said the higher education sector had witnessed a tremendous growth during the last five years through establishment of a number of universities by the federal/provincial governments while the student enrollment also remarkably increased.

The VCs virtual meeting was presided over by the head of the VCs committee, Dr Mohammad Ali, who is the vice chancellor of Quaid-i-Azam University.

The VCs expressed apprehension that the budgetary cut would make it impossible for universities to pay salaries and pensions let alone meeting the overall expenses needed to run them.

According to HEC and VCs, the Ministry of Finance has proposed an indicative budget ceiling of only Rs30 billion for the higher education sector’s recurring grant against the rationalised demand of Rs104.98 billion.

A press release said over 120 heads of public sector universities, who attended the virtual meeting from across the country, were unanimous in lamenting the government’s decision about the unprecedented cut in the universities’ budget and urged the prime minister, finance minister and the minister for education to urgently look into the matter and enhance the budget as per rationalised demand to avoid subversion of long-term socioeconomic goals of the country and save the higher education sector from total chaos and collapse.

They said the rationalised demand was submitted following a rigorous review and assessment process of the requirement of 100 existing universities, 49 research centres/institutes and 18 new universities (eligible for funding) by a joint assessment committee of HEC and the Ministry of Finance.

The VCs said the universities were already under enormous financial pressure because of the stagnant funding during the last five years.

They said the Covid-19 pandemic further exacerbated the financial stress by increasing the cost and reducing the fee inflows. They said the public universities would be left with no other alternative but to increase the student fee drastically, enhance student intake beyond capacities, adding that these repercussions will lead the sector to disaster and severely dent the quality of learning.

The university heads said if an additional grant of Rs15 billion committed by the government last year for the current fiscal year was not provided and decision to cut funding not reversed, the universities will not be able to survive.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2022