Higher Education Commission budget concerns

HEC shows concern over proposed cut on budget
Islamabad, Sep 02: Higher Education Commission (HEC) expressed its serious concerns over the proposed financial cut on development and non-development budget to cover the floods damages across the country and demanded to exempt education sector particularly higher education from this financial constraint.

Talking to media persons at HEC Secretariat on Tuesday, HEC Chairman Dr Javaid R Laghari said the Planning Commission had been showing non-serious attitude, which might negatively impact the future of thousands of students getting higher education across the world.

He said both Ministry of Finance and World Bank were agreed upon the funding of Rs 28 billion to promote talent and intellectualism in the country, but planning commission applied a cut of Rs 5 billion and only approved Rs 25 billion for HEC during ongoing fiscal year 2010-11.

Laghari said the federal government had announced 50 percent ad hoc increase in salaries, 15 percent increase in medical allowances and 15 to 20 percent increase in pension. Total impact of all these benefits amounts to Rs 7 billion, however the Finance Division had not been providing this amount to HEC, he maintained.

The chairman said overall enrollment of students in different universities and degree-awarding institutes across the country had increased to 82 percent during last five years, while HEC had set the target to provide tertiary education up to 27.7 million boys and girls between 17 to 23 years of age up to year 2020.

He said the government had paid special attention to girls’ education as the literacy rate in females had jumped to 46.4 percent of total population with an increase of 4.9 percent during last 10 years.

“On the other hand, the literacy rate of boys’ education has been recorded at 53.6 percent with shocking decrease of 9.44 percent as compared to financial year 2000-01,” the chairman added.

He said HEC had committed to provide assistance to 2,800 foreign PhD students out of which 350 scholars across the country had completed this programme. Similarly, 385 scholars had got Ph D degrees out of total 3,800 local PhD programmes announced by HEC.

Laghari was on the view that there should be at least 35 to 37 percent increase in HEC budget every year to meet the education policy goals by 2015 while seven percent of total budget for education sector should be proposed up to Rs 1.464 trillion while the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the country might be estimated $220 billion till year 2015.

The chairman said government allocated Rs 15.762 billion for the HEC in the federal budget for 2010-11 under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), which was 29.94 percent less than the previous year because of some financial constraints.

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