Dr Niaz Ahmad Akhtar was appointed as chairman for the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in February 2026, six months after the last officially appointed chairman ended his tenure. This is a vaunted position — there were over 750 applications. A flurry of articles and op-eds appeared in the news media, highlighting the myriad challenges awaiting the new entrant. There has been some debate over what a new chairman can realistically achieve, since term limits have been slashed from four years to two.

Almost everyone agrees, however, on the desperate need for reform in higher education.

News from the last year has been dismal. Student enrolments are in significant decline. Infighting at the HEC, a conflict between the chairman and the executive director, escalated to the courts. The QS World University Rankings shocked many with the revelation that not a single Pakistani institution made it among the world’s top 350 universities.

The story that takes the cake, though, is one that few people are aware of. It played out quietly in a courtroom of the Islamabad High Court over several months, a case innocuously titled Dr Saadia Masood vs Federation of Pakistan.

A bold national experiment once promised to transform Pakistan into a ‘knowledge economy.’ But, a little over two decades later, that dream has unravelled into court cases, protests, declining enrolments, sliding university rankings and an exodus of academic talent. At the heart of this failure was the treatment meted out by stakeholders to the faculty tenure track system, which was meant to transform the country’s higher education system…

A bold national experiment once promised to transform Pakistan into a ‘knowledge economy.’ But, a little over two decades later, that dream has unravelled into court cases, protests, declining enrolments, sliding university rankings and an exodus of academic talent. At the heart of this failure was the treatment meted out by stakeholders to the faculty tenure track system, which was meant to transform the country’s higher education system…

In these proceedings, the All Pakistan Tenure Track Faculty Association (APTTA) faced off against the HEC and the national finance division. The bone of contention was the release of salaries and benefits for PhD faculty in Pakistani universities. This story secured low coverage in the media, but it is arguably the most important narrative in recent years, because it highlights, in sharp and stunning clarity, the tragic arc of our national higher education experiment.

Consider this: 20 years ago, the HEC instituted a special lucrative new salary package to attract world-class PhD faculties to Pakistan’s universities. This tenure track system (TTS) package was introduced with great fanfare, but was soon consigned to oblivion — the pay scale has been revised only three times over the last two decades.

In 2007, the good old days, when the US dollar averaged around Rs60, the starting salary for an assistant professor was Rs80,000. It was a princely sum. Today, the same position pays around Rs175,000, while the dollar is valued at Rs282 — it is an absolute travesty. The amount may have doubled but purchasing power has crashed several times over.

A mass exodus of our finest and highest qualified minds has been underway for years — almost everyone who can, has packed up and left. I have sat in on faculty hiring interviews where candidates, when shown the salary package, burst into incredulous laughter.

Small wonder that, today, the higher education sector hovers in a state of quiet desperation. This unremarked legal case draws to a close a 20-year saga — the story of how a stunning and ambitious national vision was thwarted by years of apathy and neglect, finally devolving into protests and legal squabbles, bitterness and despair.

How did we get here? How did the system break down so completely? Are there lessons here for us? This is an autopsy of Pakistan’s TTS.

1996-2000: THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

In the 1990s, with the information revolution gearing up and globalisation in full swing, it was clear that the future was not about minerals or manufacturing; it was about technology and skills.

In 1996, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published an influential policy framework for the ‘knowledge economy’, followed by the World Bank’s landmark ‘Knowledge for Development’ report in 1998. Developing countries drew up ambitious roadmaps: there was Cyber Korea 21 Vision, Malaysia’s Vision 2020, IT2000 in Singapore, Taiwan’s Plan to Develop a Knowledge-based Economy, Thailand’s IT2000 and China’s Tenth Five-Year Plan.

The mantra ran something like this: knowledge and specialisations are the new oil. The future belongs to industries that draw together human specialisation, creativity and technology, to open up vast new economic frontiers. This knowledge economy is essential for countries to remain competitive. And it is also a sustainable formula, one that constantly creates new opportunities.

The implication here is obvious: universities are the living beating heart of this ecosystem, the undisputed foundation. Universities not only disseminate knowledge and expertise but, more importantly, they also create it. Vibrant industries build up around the universities, like spokes around a hub.

Considerable data has been amassed to back this up. A massive study of 2019 looked at 15,000 universities in 78 countries and found a direct correlation between an increase in the number of universities and per capita GDP growth.

An investigation of the UK higher education sector over 2021-2022 found that every £1 invested in universities returns around £14 in economic benefit — an overall private sector productivity boost of about £40 billion/year.

2001: MAPPING THE FUTURE

Pakistan’s journey commenced in April 2001, when the government constituted a task force to review the state of higher education.

This body, sponsored by the World Bank, and headed by the luminaries Syed Babar Ali, founder of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums) and Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, founding president of the Aga Khan University, deliberated for seven months, interacted with 700 stakeholders and presented its findings in January 2002.

Their assessment was unsurprising: the........

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