Our participation rate in higher education is only 13%: Ahsan Iqbal

Minister of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, Professor Ahsan Iqbal, on Thursday highlighted the urgent need to transform Pakistan’s higher education system into an engine of national development, innovation and economic growth, calling on universities to go beyond research on paper to produce solutions with real impact.

In his keynote address at the National Leadership Dialogue – From Knowledge to Impact, organized by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), the minister said Pakistan’s development visions, including Vision 2010, Vision 2025 and now Uraan Pakistan, reflected a steadfast determination to strengthen human capital, despite repeated disruptions.

“We tried to move forward through Vision 2025, but it was interrupted. Now we are trying to move in this direction again through Uraan Pakistan,” he said, adding that earlier initiatives had nevertheless laid the foundation for the current higher education system.

Recalling his tenure during Vision 2010, Ahsan Iqbal said Pakistan was facing an acute shortage of qualified teachers. “At that time, there were only about 350 science and technology doctors, and almost 65 to 70 percent of them were close to retirement,” he notes.

To address this problem, he said, the government approved two major initiatives, including the Overseas Scholarship Program for 5,000 doctoral students and the Indigenous Doctoral Scholarship Program for another 5,000 researchers.

“These 10,000 doctors today constitute the backbone of our human resource base on which the system rests,” he said, adding that policy continuity was essential to achieve long-term gains.

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The minister said that funding for higher education has also been significantly improved under Vision 2025. “When we took charge, the Higher Education Commission was virtually closed and its development budget was around Rs 10-11 billion. We increased it to Rs 45 billion and introduced major reforms to make higher education inclusive and competitive,” he said.

Explaining the reform agenda, he said a two-tier university system was envisaged: one focused on widespread access and success, and another “premier league” of universities competing globally in advanced research and academic excellence.

He added that national centers in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, big data, cloud computing, quantum computing and nanotechnology have also been established.

Highlighting international collaboration, Ahsan Iqbal said programs such as US-Pakistan Knowledge Corridor and UK-Pakistan Knowledge Gateway have been launched to bridge Pakistan’s human resource gap. “Our participation rate in higher education is only 13 percent, compared to 25 percent in Bangladesh and 60 percent in China. This gap is holding back our expansion,” he said.

The minister expressed concern that much of the research in Pakistan remained confined to academic journals. “We are suffering from what I call academic inflation. Papers are being published, but ideas that can contribute to national development are missing,” he said, calling for a shift towards innovation, commercialization and industrial linkages.

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He stressed that universities must become “innovation engines, startup launch pads and policy think tanks,” capable of addressing national challenges in agriculture, industry and technology, while producing ethically grounded and socially responsible citizens.

Ahsan Iqbal said the government was developing a seven-pillar performance audit framework for universities, covering academic excellence, research and innovation, industry linkages, community contribution, technology enablement, governance and graduate quality.

“Our universities must become institutions of national development, and this transition must take place in emergency mode,” he said.