Published on: September 22, 2025 3:25 AM

Are university admissions declining in Pakistan, or are we misreading a shift in students’ demand as a decline?

Our conversations with faculty members and admissions teams at both public and private institutions suggest a more complicated picture. Private universities report steady demand overall, with a surge in computing programs. Many have expanded computer science intakes, launched dedicated AI departments, and are running multiple parallel sections of CS with 50 students in each.

Public universities note that admissions cycles are still underway. It may be premature to make any claim at this stage. However, they state that their current admission statistics are satisfactory across disciplines so far.

If media is certain that there is a broad-based collapse, they should publish program-wise admissions data (public and private), disclose assumptions behind projections, and surface any conflicts of interest that might shape the policy dialogue.

Admissions in the evergreen programs of medical and health sciences, agriculture, and food sciences remain unchanged.

The clearest soft spot is in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), where our respondents acknowledge a decline in admissions. They attributed this decline to outdated syllabi, conservative teaching approaches, and cultural inertia.

The difference between “decline” and “reallocation” matters. What TV headlines often frame as a system-wide crisis looks more like a redistribution of applicants, including an intensified demand in........

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