KP needs no more varsities
Editorial
It has been learned that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Caretaker Government is planning to establish new universities, however, this decision should be immediately reviewed as the existing provincial public sector higher educational institutions have already been going through huge financial and administrative crisis since long, therefore, in such a critical situation, opening new varsities is not a right decision but a wastage of financial resources and a cause to create more problems for the higher education department.
Unfortunately, in Pakistan, particularly KP, universities are only established for the purpose that the leaders of political parties could recruit their relatives, near and dear ones, and workers over there to strengthen their vote bank and political power, not to provide affordable education to the students of far-flung and remote areas at their doorstep – resulting in a huge loss to the public exchequer.
As highlighted above that political parties establish universities just for their vested interests, not to promote the education and research, therefore, the provincial caretaker government should not act like this and play its due role as a neutral, non-partisan, and of course, a ‘real caretaker setup’, as mentioned in the Constitution to help the Election Commission of Pakistan in conducting free and fair elections and run the day-to-day affairs of the departments till the arrival of an elected government.
It is a fact that there is no need for opening more and more universities in KP, because, a huge mess has already been created from 2002 to 2022 by almost all political parties in power. Instead of improving the standard of education and research, they only focused on political scoring by making new higher educational institutions and as a result, the oldest and historical varsities like the University of Peshawar and others are going through serious financial crisis due to non-provision of enough funds by the provincial government.
Because of this state of affairs, the quality of higher education and research is very poor in the province, and huge corruption, malpractices and irregularities in the newly-established politically-driven institutions are being reported in media – which is a matter of big embarrassment for the KP government and the authorities concerned.
Therefore, it is need of the hour that the provincial caretaker government should revise any such plan and strongly focus on improving the academic, administrative and financial conditions of the existing public sector universities so that the future of thousands of students might be safeguarded, otherwise the establishment of varsities with political motivation and vested interests will only create further problems for the province – that is already going through a critical situation and unable to bear more burden.
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