University education is not only about delivering lectures, awarding grades and degrees or meeting regulatory requirements. At its core, it is about the student experience; whether students are able to learn, persist, feel supported and graduate with confidence and dignity. In Pakistan, recent incidents have reminded us that university life can become overwhelming. Students facing academic pressure, financial stress, isolation or long administrative delays sometimes reach breaking points. These moments force an uncomfortable question: could the university have intervened earlier, faster and more humanely?

Most universities genuinely care about their students. Yet many governance systems were designed around procedures rather than persons. They function adequately for routine matters, but when a student faces real crisis - serious illness, sudden poverty, family breakdown, academic derailment or mental distress - those same systems often become slow and fragmented. Files move. Offices refer cases onward. Decisions wait. Meanwhile, the students' struggles continue.

This is not just an administrative gap. In many ways, it is a governance choice by the university leadership. When responsibility for student hardship is spread across multiple offices, as per policy, then no one truly owns the outcome. Delays increase stress. Dropout becomes more likely. Mental health suffers. A system that follows rules but fails its students is failing in its........

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