Most public universities are currently facing two dilemmas: first, of the 154 public universities in the country, only 88 (57 per cent) currently have vice-chancellors (VCs) on regular appointments. Of the other 43 per cent, six universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are operating without any VC at all and another 60 nationwide (29 in Punjab, 16 in KP, and five each in Sindh, Balochistan, and ICT) have only acting charge VCs, most of them since 2023 and quite a few since 2022.

In all of government, acting appointees stall on major decisions, the kind that brings major changes or requires spending – anything that rival parties (and there are always rivals) can weaponize into corruption charges.

Second, as I have repeated on multiple occasions, since 2017, public spending on higher education has been essentially flat in rupee terms. Given the aggregate inflation since then and the slip ’n slide the local currency has been on against the US dollar, in purchasing power terms, that spending has been decimated. Irrespective of whether public university VCs are appointed on a regular or acting basis, the biggest challenge that all public universities face right now is making ends meet.

You would think that at least now, seven years since the higher education budget was frozen in place, the search for new VCs would prioritize – in fact, actively seek – candidates that understand this challenge, have a credible plan to take it on and a demonstrable track record of delivery at prior institutions.

That would be sanity but instead what we do is this: we take a group of outsiders who are not affiliated with the university, are unaware of the challenges and available opportunities of individual institutions and put them in a search committee.

In Punjab, search committees are bound by short-listing criteria that comprise: academic qualifications like the ranking of the university the applicant earned their PhD degree from (weighted 35 per cent);........

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