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Pakistan today faces degree inflation, outdated curricula, weak market relevance, persistent brain drain, low-impact research, and an obsession with rankings.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........

© Daily Times