Beautiful plans, unchanged universities

Pakistan’s universities have become expert at writing strategic plans. The harder test is whether anything is different five years later.
Visit a Pakistani university’s website and chances are you will find a strategic plan: glossy, colour-coded, approved by a statutory body. The uncomfortable question is what changed because of it

The distinction matters. The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has placed institutional reform and strategic planning on its agenda and universities are being encouraged to draw up long-term plans for research, teaching, innovation and financial sustainability. But a strategic plan is not a strategy. A document can be handsomely designed, formally approved and proudly uploaded without shifting a single institutional outcome. The trouble starts when planning becomes a compliance ritual instead of a way of thinking.

Start at the top. Before asking every university for yet another five-year plan, Pakistan must answer a bigger question: what should its higher education system look like in 2050? What kind of graduates will the country need? Which sector will drive growth? How should universities respond to artificial intelligence, climate change and a changing labour market? No single campus can answer these alone. The country needs a long-term national vision, shaped by the HEC, provincial authorities, vice chancellors, academics, industry and employers: not another bureaucratic document but a direction within which each university can define its own mission.

Next, end the myth that every university must do everything. Pakistan now has 278 universities, 163 public and 115 private, enrolling about 2.4 million students, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2025-26. Yet institutions are asked, all at once, to raise publications, climb rankings, launch programmes, attract foreign students, win external funding, build industry links and adopt AI. The result is a long wish list and no identity.

Pakistan needs differentiated universities. An agricultural university should be judged by what it does for productivity, food security and climate resilience; an engineering university by industrial innovation and technical capability; a business school by entrepreneurship and competitiveness. That does not confine a university to one discipline. It gives it a purpose. No country builds a world-class system by handing every institution the same template.

Then comes honest diagnosis. Every university should be assessed on teaching, faculty capacity, research, graduate employability, governance, finances and industry engagement. The aim is not to rank institutions but to measure the strategic gap between where each stand and where it needs to be.

Public money should follow that gap. The question is not how much a university receives but what money is meant to change. And the money is scarce. Public spending on education was about 0.8 per cent of GDP in 2024-25 and the HEC’s revised development allocation for 2025-26 was Rs 34.9 billion for 147 university projects with some Rs 243 billion of work still to be funded, the Survey shows. A university with a research-infrastructure deficit should be funded to close it; one whose graduates struggle to find jobs should be backed to build industry partnerships, internships and curriculum reform. Tie the funding to targets for one, three and five years and make sure the university knows what resources it can count on. Fund the gap, not simply the institution.

Self-assessment is not enough. Independent panels of senior academics, industry representatives and, where appropriate, international experts should periodically ask blunt questions. Did research quality improve? Did graduate employability? Did retention and completion? Did the investment deliver? Workshops held, memoranda signed and committees formed are activity, not achievement.

Leadership matters too. A vice chancellor serves four years, but a university should not become a four-year institution. The vision should belong to the university; the vice chancellor should be its custodian and chief implementer. A new vice chancellor’s first job is to examine the existing strategy, keep what works and fix what does not, rather than replace it with a personal vision.

Autonomy, however, comes with a price: accountability. If a university is given adequate resources, authority and clear targets, it should be measured against them. Underperformance should first trigger diagnosis: were the targets realistic, the resources adequate, the regulations too tight or the implementation weak? But persistent failure despite adequate support deserves a formal review, with transparent criteria, evidence and due process. The aim is not to frighten university leaders. It is to build a culture in which public institutions are expected to deliver.

Two pressures show why strategic thinking cannot be avoided. Artificial intelligence is not just another course; it is changing how knowledge is produced, how students learn and how examinations are conducted. The real question is not how to introduce AI, but what a university should look like in an AI-enabled economy. Falling admissions are likewise a signal, not statistics. They may mean programmes that no longer match the labour market, graduates who cannot find jobs, or a university with no distinctive identity. Launching new programmes and intensifying marketing treats the symptom, not the cause.

Strategic planning offices can help, but only if they are more than document factories. With clear terms of reference, reliable data and real authority, they should track key performance indicators, flag deviations and report regularly to governing bodies. A planning unit that writes a plan and then vanishes has misunderstood its purpose.

The real test of a strategic plan is not whether it is approved, printed in colour or presented at a seminar. It is whether, five years on, the university is measurably different. Pakistan’s universities need strategies that outlive the tenure of individuals: institutions that know why they exist, what they are uniquely good at, where they must improve and how they will be judged.

The challenge is not to plan for the sake of planning. It is to turn planning into performance.

Prof. Dr. Muhammad Nauman Abbasi. The writer is Professor and Director, Institute of Management Sciences, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan.