How Pakistan’s Universities Fail Their Students |
On the evening of December 19, 2025, a 3rd-year pharmacy student at the University of Lahore died by suicide after jumping from the fourth floor of a campus building, an incident confirmed by university officials and widely reported by major national outlets. The student, identified in reports as a high‑performing scholar with no overt history of disciplinary issues, had recently been informed he would be declared ineligible for examinations due to short attendance.
In the days that followed, hundreds of students gathered in peaceful protest outside the campus gates, demanding transparency, a full inquiry, and accountable leadership. Student organizations pointed to an alarming lack of accessible counseling services, minimal academic support structures, and a culture that equates emotional distress with personal failure.
According to a PMC article, 42.66% of university students nationwide experience chronic stress or anxiety. Although some universities have counselling centers, they are often staffed by student psychologists from within the academic department, without fully resourced mental‑health teams, underscoring that existing support structures are minimal compared with student needs. What at first appeared as an isolated, heartbreaking tragedy instead exposed systemic fault lines in Pakistan’s higher education: a landscape where administrative rigidity, performance pressures, and the erosion of communal care converge with fatal consequence.
Universities in Pakistan were not always the bureaucratic and administratively constrained spaces they are today. The University of the Punjab, established in 1882, was envisioned as a center for civic engagement as much as academic instruction. One of its earliest vice-chancellors, Dr. A.C. Woolner, emphasized not only scholarly rigor but also the cultivation of public conscience among students. Similarly, institutions influenced by Aligarh Muslim University championed debate societies, literary circles, and political engagement.
Early curricula blended liberal education with local cultural literacy, producing students who could navigate civic, political, and social responsibilities. By the mid-20th century, Pakistani universities became critical arenas for political discourse. Student unions, protest movements, and literary societies flourished. For instance, in the 1960s, the National Students Federation and other political groups organized campus-wide discussions on land reforms, gender rights, and labor laws, shaping both public opinion and policy discourse.
Yet this vibrancy began to erode with the imposition of centralized control and the curtailing of student unions. In 1984, Pakistan banned student unions under General Zia-ul-Haq’s regime, claiming they were hotbeds of political unrest. This effectively removed formal mechanisms for student advocacy and collective action, transforming universities from platforms of dialogue into managed spaces of compliance. Although the ban was briefly reversed in 1989 under the democratic government, the lifting was