HEC to provide funds only to already established universities

Islamabad: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has decided to not allocate funds to the new universities and only already established public sector universities would be eligible to get funds.

The decision in this regard has been taken after deduction in HEC budget by the government due to ongoing financial issues, said an official on Monday while talking to APP. The sources further said that a hefty amount of HEC budget had also been allocated to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

HEC, the sources said, had directed the new universities to manage funds on their own to fulfill the needs. However, to arrange the funds, obviously the new universities would increase the fees due to which the burden would be on the students, they added.

According to the HEC stance, it was hard to run the already established public sector universities without financial support of HEC so these universities would be preferred in allocation of funds. The sources claimed that during last year the HEC could utilize only 50 per cent of development funds. Out of total of Rs37 billion allocation of development funds, HEC failed to utilize Rs18 billion due to which the government had decided to make less allocation to HEC. However, the HEC official while rejecting this assertion, stated that HEC could not utilise these funds saying that the government had provided less funds as compared to the allocation.