Descripción de Downfall of Higher Education Commission Alarming Moment by Azizi in Hasb e Hall.flv:

Islamabad: Reminding the prime minister of his commitment he made with the vice chancellors of the public sector universities last month, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has requested him to reconsider the allocation for education sector in the annual budget. HEC Chairman Javaid H. Laghari has written a letter to Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani requesting him to reconsider allocation of budget to the education sector in line with the commitment he made with vice chancellors of the public sector universities last month. According to the sources in HEC, the chairman expressed his grave concern over the minimal budget allocation for the education sector stating that any roll back would severely affect the growth that HEC has made over the last eight years. A number of parliamentarians have also strongly objected in their budgetary speeches to this cut. A total of Rs15.762 billion PSDP budget for 2010-11 has been proposed for the HEC, which is Rs7 billion less than the last year's approved budget of Rs22.5 billion. According to the information, HEC had demanded 30 per cent increase in the current budget for the upcoming budget for the year 2010-2011, but it received a negative response. The development budget for the fiscal year 2009-2010 was Rs22.5 billion in which the cabinet cut down Rs4 billion leaving 18.5 billion with the HEC to continue its various projects. Sources in the HEC said that currently there are over 9,000 students on various HEC scholarships and human resource development programmes, including foreign PhD scholarships in various stages of their progress. "It is estimated that Rs10 billion will be needed just to maintain their monthly stipend, tuition fees and research expenses," the sources added. The chairman feared that a roll over of Rs7 billion unreleased budgetary allocation for 2009-10 will take HEC into default from day one of the new financial year, what to talk of supporting 193 ongoing and 11 new projects across 258 campuses in Pakistan. According to the letter, the phenomenal growth that HEC has seen since 2002 (growth of students from 276,274 to 803,507; growth of campuses from 116 to 258; growth of research publications from 815 to 4013; growth of PhD degrees from 1947 to 3280 in just last 8 years alone) will come to a grinding halt. On the other hand, in India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development recently announced its intention to build 14 new comprehensive world-class universities. Federal funding for education in India in its five year plan has increased nine times high while in Pakistan it has been reduced to half of the requirements. Talking to 'The News' HEC Executive Director Dr Sohail Naqvi conceded that they are finding it difficult to run HEC in the current allocated budget and the chairman has written a letter to the PM in this regard. "The PM in presence of dozens of people had assured raise in the HEC budget a few days ago but the budget has been decreased," he said. He feared enormous wastage of resources if the government fails to increase the current budget. "All our ongoing programmes and those who are yet to be stated would suffer badly," he said. While replaying to a question regarding HEC's previous intention of rationalising fee structure in order to generate funds, he said that they could not run ongoing projects merely by rationalising fee structure. "If we totally depend on fee structure then we have to increase fee in universities for 5 times which would be against the HEC's motto of making higher education accessible to every one," he added.