Pakistan: More than 34 universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are facing financial crisis

More than 34 universities in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are facing financial crisis, with a collective loss of Rs 15 billion Pakistani rupees (PKR), ARY News reported.

According to the description, the financial crisis is due to the significant disparity between the income and expenditure of universities. The total expenditure of universities is 34 billion PKR, the income is only 18 billion PKR.

Increase in salaries and pensions has further aggravated the problem, resulting in a wide gap between income and expenditure.

The Higher Education Commission has stopped annual grants of PKR 9 billion 40 million since 2018. However, the provincial government has released a grant of PKR 1 billion 90 million for universities in 2023–2024.

To meet pension and grant obligations, universities need PKR 13 billion. Additionally, an additional PKR 8 billion 75 million is required to settle pension obligations, ARY News reports.

To ease financial woes, experts have recommended setting up endowment funds and digitalizing fees and other processes to streamline functioning and increase efficiency.

In May last year, the largest university of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) was facing financial problems. According to ARY News report, the university did not have money to pay salaries to the employees and projects were also stalled due to lack of funds.

The university administration required PKR 300 million to pay salaries and budget. However, the complete budget was not released by the Higher Education Commission (HEC). Apart from this, the students also did not pay the fees on time.

The vice chancellor of the university said that there was a loss of PKR 200 million due to the employees’ protest. The university was incurring a loss of PKR 350 million and payment of salaries was entirely dependent on fees paid by students.