A couple of years back, a major development agency was executing a project in the higher education sector in Pakistan. The goal of the project was to assist a group of over a dozen partner public universities, scattered across the length and breadth of the country, in developing their capacities in a number of areas where they were critically lacking.
One area that almost all of them identified was strategic planning in public universities. The project assembled a team of experts from the US to develop and deliver a customised training program to the vice chancellors (VCs) of these universities. The venue of the multi-day training workshop was the overseas campus of a foreign university in Seoul. The cost of the programme and travel for all attendees was borne by the project, with no cost to the public exchequer.
VCs are routinely required to obtain a no-objection certificate (NOC) before international travel from the government bureaucracy to which they report. The VCs of universities in Islamabad, Gilgit-Baltistan and AJK got their NOCs without much fuss.
Several partner universities were located in Punjab. When their VCs approached the bureaucracy there with the same request at around the same time, the bureaucracy did what bureaucracies do best – sit on those NOC requests until someone made a beeline for their office to make a supplication. When a senior member from the project did just that in the hopes of securing the NOCs for all participating VCs from Punjab, they were told in no uncertain terms that the NOCs would not be issued unless an invitation would be extended to the issuing authority.
Fortunately, one VC was well-connected and had moved quickly to secure his NOC before the bureaucracy knew what was up. That set a precedent that made it difficult for the bureaucracy to deny all other VCs’ identical requests. In a final effort to sabotage the programme, the issuance of NOCs was delayed until the last moment, but all VCs from Punjab eventually managed to attend.
Sindh’s bureaucracy became aware of the training programme only after it had issued NOCs and took a different approach. One of its senior members made the argument that it needed to “monitor” VCs and, in the future, should be included in future activities like this. It was a softer tone and stance but amounted to the same demand that came out of Punjab.
KP’s case was the saddest of all. KP’s bureaucracy made the same demand implicitly to the VCs they were dealing with and blocked the issuing of NOCs for all its university VCs. As a result, not a single one of them was allowed to attend the training programme. Balochistan had the fewest partner universities, which may be why their requests thankfully went unnoticed and were easily approved.
The bureaucracy sees a trip abroad on the taxpayers’, or anyone’s, dime as the ultimate goodie. There was the bureaucrat who gleefully told a recently returned graduate from a PhD programme abroad that he had his fun staying abroad for years, and he would have to stay in Pakistan for the foreseeable future. There was another bureaucrat who expressed his unconcealed jealousy about how frequently some academics attend conferences abroad. A VC of a prominent university in Sindh was questioned by a bureaucrat about what business of academics it is to be travelling anywhere outside the country at all, and was advised to scale back travel.
For civilian bureaucrats and retired military bureaucracy, academia is the final frontier whose perks and resources remain unconquered and elusive.
Over the last two decades, domestic and international travel have become a common feature of work in Pakistani academia, as is the case elsewhere in the world. Legitimate reasons include training programmes for administrative and support staff or academic activities (conferences, workshops, exchanges) for faculty and students. This has not escaped the attention of opportunists within the political and bureaucratic ranks of the government. Right now, these folks are salivating at the prospects of getting their hands on whatever is left within the carcasses of nearly bankrupt public universities.
Or is this just paranoia speaking?
Earlier this year, the Sindh Universities and Institutes Laws (Amendment) Act 2025 made changes to the acts of 30 public universities in Sindh to allow “cadre officer(s) of BPS-21 or above, having Master’s Degree … or the candidates having Master’s degree preferable Ph.D. in the relevant field and having 15 years’ experience in academia/Intelligentsia or civil society” to be appointed VCs of universities.
Punjab has the Universities and Institutes Laws (Amendment) Act 2025, which amends the acts of 26 public universities in the province to require the appointment of “three members of [the] Provincial Assembly of the Punjab, including at least one female member of the Assembly, to be nominated by the Speaker of the Assembly” to the syndicates of universities.
In a parallel universe, such amendments might actually lead to some good. Recently, I argued in favour of appointing people without a PhD as VCs, who may not even be associated with academia, but who have a demonstrable track record of solving the kinds of problems universities face: setting up and raising funds for an endowment, shielding academics from outside political pressures and influences, building an institutional culture of excellence, supporting synergistic collaborations, etc. Having elected representatives invested in the success of universities as members of the syndicate could lobby on their behalf.
Unfortunately, in this reality, these amendments are more likely to become the tools that will be employed to extract perks and boondoggles by those who, until recently, were disqualified from holding any role in universities. The coming months will see the completion of VC tenures at several universities in Sindh, including some very good ones. The litmus test for the true intention behind these amendments will reveal itself through the choices of VCs that will be appointed as their replacements. I hope I am wrong.
The writer (she/her) has a PhD in Education.
