University Scholarships.

The Prime Minister's announcement of the 'largest undergraduate scholarship programme launched in the history of Pakistan' is surely positive but does nothing to improve the structure of the higher education system in Pakistan. It is a grand gesture, but in policy terms is more in line with the PML-N government's laptop disbursement programme; individual students will benefit massively but the overall higher education system and employment opportunities for university graduates will not see a substantial improvement.

The scholarships will undoubtedly ease the financial burden on parents of undergraduate students enrolled in college but lifting the standard of higher education in the country takes a lot more than this. Improving access to higher education for all potential students and providing better quality of university education needs to be made a priority if the government is really interested in making progressive changes to the education system.

Given that the budget for higher education like many other human developmental sectors saw a sharp cut in this year's annual budget, one wonders what the point of all of this is. Are the scholarships enough to compensate for the loss of funding for public universities when they are already far behind international standards? Pakistani universities are riddled with problems, from a lack of facilities to a critical dearth of original research, and with the well much...