By Zahid Nasim Khattak
Alumnus, Department of Botany, University of Peshawar, 1985–1988
There was a time when admission to the University of Peshawar was a matter of immense pride. For students from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, being admitted to its hallowed departments meant entering an institution that represented knowledge, scholarship, scientific inquiry and intellectual freedom.
I was one of those students. I studied in the Department of Botany from 1985 to 1988.
For me, therefore, the present condition of the University is not merely another story about a financially troubled public institution. It is deeply personal. It is painful to watch an institution that shaped generations of students struggle to pay salaries and pensions, raise fees beyond the reach of ordinary families, close academic programmes because students no longer enrol, and contemplate ways of generating income from its assets.
The University of Peshawar is now facing a crisis that can no longer be described as temporary. In April 2026, employees protested over delayed salaries and pensions. According to the Peshawar University Teachers Association, Rs. 131 million in salary payments for March remained unpaid, while Rs162 million in pensions had not been released.
In June, the teachers’ representatives reported that the University was again struggling to pay salaries and pensions and had requested a supplementary grant of Rs. 619 million from the provincial government. They warned that there were insufficient funds even for salaries and pensions in the coming months.
This is not the condition of an institution merely experiencing a bad financial year. It is the symptom of a deep structural failure. And the most uncomfortable question is this: How did one of Pakistan’s historic universities get here?
This crisis did not begin yesterday, it is tempting for governments and university administrations to blame today’s crisis on inflation, reduced grants, the 18th Amendment, HEC funding, pensions or declining enrolment.
All of these factors matter, but none tells the whole story. The University’s own financial record shows that its budget shortfall began as far back as 2011–12. By January 2021, its outstanding liabilities had reached approximately Rs1.3 billion, including pension liabilities, loans and accumulated budget shortfalls.
The crisis, therefore, has been building for well over a decade. Successive administrations watched expenditure rise, liabilities accumulate and academic competitiveness decline. Successive provincial governments watched the situation deteriorate and repeatedly responded with temporary financial assistance rather than a permanent restructuring of the institution.
The result is what we see today: a university caught between an unsustainable expenditure structure and an increasingly inadequate revenue base.
The recruitment scandal that cannot be forgotten, perhaps the most disturbing evidence comes from the Provincial Inspection Team inquiry into the University’s affairs. The 2020 inquiry reported that 2,756 employees had been appointed irregularly or illegally over roughly a decade. It found that 1,451 additional posts had allegedly been created for administrative and ministerial staff in violation of HEC criteria, while 1,305 employees had reportedly been recruited without proper creation of posts and beyond sanctioned strength. The inquiry also identified various allegedly unauthorised allowances and financial benefits. The inquiry reportedly recommended that the matter be referred to the National Accountability Bureau.
These are not minor administrative observations.
Every permanent appointment creates a recurring financial obligation.
One appointment means a salary.
Years later it means increments.
Then allowances.
Then retirement benefits.
Then pension.
Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of employees and the consequences become obvious.
Today’s pension crisis can therefore be partly the deferred cost of yesterday’s recruitment decisions. This is why the University cannot simply demand more money from government without simultaneously addressing its internal expenditure structure.
But equally, the government cannot use past administrative failures as an excuse to abandon an institution serving thousands of students and employees.
Both sides have responsibilities.
There is evidence that reform can work, interestingly, the University itself has demonstrated that the situation is not beyond repair. Following corrective measures and financial assistance from the federal and provincial governments, the University reportedly moved from a deficit of approximately Rs. 1.3 billion to a surplus of Rs. 137 million in 2021–22.
This is a crucial lesson.
It proves that financial discipline, expenditure control and corrective management can make a difference. The question is therefore not whether the University can be rescued. It can, the real question is
Why has the reform not been sustained?
Why has the University repeatedly returned to the same financial crisis?
Why are salaries and pensions again delayed?
Why are employees again protesting?
Why are students paying more while enrolment is falling?
Why is the provincial government still responding to a structural problem with emergency grants?
The University administration must accept responsibility for its own failures, But the provincial government cannot wash its hands of the problem by simply saying: that the universities are autonomous. This argument deserves serious scrutiny. Yes, universities have statutory autonomy. But a public university is still a public institution performing a public service.
If the government expects universities to educate the province’s youth, conduct research, produce teachers and professionals, preserve important academic disciplines and provide opportunities to students from poor and middle-income families, then the government must have a predictable and sustainable financing policy for higher education.
The Peshawar High Court itself became concerned about this contradiction. In April 2026, while hearing a case relating to outstanding retirement benefits, the court was told that the provincial government considered public universities independent institutions under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities Act and therefore not entitled to a share from public funds. The court subsequently called for a comprehensive strategy involving the relevant stakeholders to address the financial deficits and resource shortages facing universities.
That position raises a fundamental policy question, if public universities are expected to provide a public service, who is ultimately responsible when they become financially incapable of doing so? The answer cannot simply be: “The university itself.”
The government cannot fund universities only when they are collapsing, the provincial government has provided financial support to universities at various points, that should be acknowledged. But the problem is the absence of a predictable, formula-based and long-term financing mechanism.
Emergency bailouts may pay salaries for a few months, but they do not solve pension liabilities. They do not modernise academic programmes. They do not improve student recruitment. They do not repair laboratories. They do not create research income. They do not fix governance and they certainly do not create a sustainable financial model.
A university cannot be run from one emergency grant to another, it needs a five- or ten-year financial plan.
And then comes the fee increase, when government funding fails to keep pace with institutional expenditure, university administrations have a tempting solution to increase student fees; but this can become a vicious circle. In 2025, the University of Peshawar’s semester fee reportedly increased from around Rs. 42,000 to Rs. 62,000. At the same time, admissions declined sharply in several programmes.
Nine BS programmes were subsequently discontinued because admissions fell below the University’s minimum threshold of 15 students. They included Development Studies, Geography, Geology, History, Social Anthropology, Statistics, Logistics and Supply Chain Analytics, Human Development and Family Studies, and Home Economics. Some programmes attracted only one, two or three applicants.
This should set alarm bells ringing. If fees rise, students leave. If students leave, fee revenue falls. If revenue falls, the administration increases fees again. Eventually the institution reaches a point where it is trying to balance its books by charging more to fewer students. That is not a sustainable university business model.
Why are students leaving? The answer is more complicated than saying that young people no longer value education. They do but they are making rational choices. Reports indicate that many students now have access to similar BS programmes in government colleges at dramatically lower fees. One comparison cited an average University of Peshawar fee of around Rs. 75,000 per semester against approximately Rs. 7,000 at colleges for comparable programmes.
This is the result of poor higher-education planning. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has expanded the number of universities and colleges, while many institutions offer overlapping programmes. Instead of developing a rational higher-education ecosystem in which universities specialise in advanced teaching and research while colleges provide affordable undergraduate education, we have allowed institutions to compete for the same pool of students.
The University of Peshawar has therefore been placed in an impossible position, it has higher costs, higher fees and declining enrolment, while cheaper alternatives are expanding.
Closing departments is not the same as reform, there is nothing inherently wrong with restructuring academic programmes. No university can keep every programme forever regardless of demand; but closing departments should be the last stage of academic reform, not the first.
Consider the subjects that have suffered declining enrolment.
Geology is strategically important to a province increasingly interested in mineral resources.
Geography has become even more important in an era of climate change, GIS, remote sensing, urbanisation and disaster risk.
Statistics is fundamental to data science, artificial intelligence and evidence-based policymaking.
Development Studies is highly relevant to a province facing poverty, displacement, conflict, climate change and development challenges.
Anthropology is critical to understanding the social and cultural complexities of the region.
Botany is directly relevant to food security, climate resilience, biodiversity and biotechnology.
The problem is not necessarily that these subjects have become irrelevant the problem may be that the University has failed to make them relevant to the twenty-first-century economy.
A modern Geography programme should combine GIS, remote sensing, climate science and urban planning.
Statistics should connect with data analytics and artificial intelligence.
Geology should connect with mineral exploration and environmental management.
Botany should connect with biotechnology, food security, climate resilience and natural-resource management.
The University needs academic reinvention, not merely departmental closure.
And then we arrive at perhaps the most sensitive question of all. The dangerous temptation: university land. What happens when a financially distressed university owns valuable land? The temptation is obvious: Sell the land. Pay the salaries. Clear the pension liabilities. Balance the books. But this is not financial reform. It is liquidation.
In 2024, the provincial government’s proposal to sell “unutilised” land belonging to public universities and a medical college in Mardan to help meet approximately Rs. 25 billion in land-related arrears triggered considerable controversy. The government directed institutions to identify land that could be sold.
The controversy rightly raised a fundamental question, should educational land be sold to meet financial obligations? My answer is no; at least not as a means of financing recurrent expenditure. Land is a finite asset. Once sold, it cannot be recovered.
A university can instead generate income from its assets through carefully designed long-term leases, research parks, technology centres, student accommodation, professional training facilities, conference centres and other commercially viable activities, while retaining ownership.
There is an enormous difference between using an asset productively and selling the asset to pay this month’s bills. The former is sustainable. The latter is consumption of capital.
Is there a plan to grab university land? This is where we must be careful. There is currently insufficient publicly established evidence to declare that any particular government has a criminal intention to seize or “grab” University of Peshawar land. Such an accusation requires evidence. But neither should the public ignore the risk. The controversy surrounding university land elsewhere in the province demonstrates why such concerns deserve serious attention. Therefore, no university land should be sold or transferred at all. University land must never become the default solution for recurring salary and pension expenditure. If a university has to sell land to pay salaries, the financial model has already failed.
The real disease is governance, the crisis of the University of Peshawar is therefore not simply a money problem, it is a governance problem. For more than a decade, there have been questions surrounding recruitment, expenditure, pensions, academic planning, leadership, student recruitment, fees and government financing. The solution cannot be found by appointing another committee and waiting for the next crisis.
The University needs professional management.
Academic excellence requires academics.
Financial management requires professional financial managers.
Human-resource planning requires HR specialists.
Asset management requires professional estate managers.
Fundraising requires professional development and alumni-relations specialists.
Modern universities around the world operate as sophisticated institutions with multi-year financial planning, research strategies, fundraising offices, endowment funds, alumni networks, technology-transfer offices and professional administrative systems. Why should the University of Peshawar be different?
What should be done now? The provincial government and University administration should jointly announce a University of Peshawar Five-Year Recovery and Transformation Plan. It should contain at least the following measures.
- Conductan independent forensic financial audit
The audit should cover at least the last 15 years and examine:
recruitment and payroll;
pensions;
allowances;
procurement;
construction;
loans;
land transactions;
leases;
commercial properties;
student fees;
grants;
research income;
and outstanding liabilities.
The findings should be made public.
- Establisha sustainable pension mechanism
Legacy pension liabilities should not continue consuming the University’s academic budget.
The provincial government should establish a dedicated mechanism for historical pension obligations, while the University should introduce actuarially sound provisions for future liabilities.
- Freezefinancially unsustainable recruitment
No major permanent recruitment should take place without an independent staffing and affordability assessment.
Every proposed position should be evaluated not merely for its first-year salary but for its entire long-term financial and pension cost.
- Reviewall fees
Student fees should be subjected to an affordability and competitiveness review.
The objective should be more students × reasonable fees × better quality and not fewer students × higher fees.
- Moderniseacademic programmes
Every department should undergo an academic viability review. But the question should not merely be “How many students are there?”
The review should consider research potential, employment opportunities, strategic importance and possibilities for interdisciplinary modernisation.
- ProtectUniversity land
A moratorium should be placed on the sale of University land until a transparent University-wide asset-management policy is approved. No land should be sold to meet recurrent expenditure.
- Establisha University Endowment Fund
The University’s thousands of alumni should be mobilised nationally and internationally.
A professionally managed endowment could support scholarships, research, laboratories and academic development.
- Createa professional Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations
The University should stop treating alumni merely as former students. Its alumni are one of its greatest potential sources of:
funding;
expertise;
international partnerships;
research opportunities;
internships;
employment networks;
and institutional advocacy.
- Introducequarterly public financial reporting
Every quarter the public should know:
how much the University received;
from whom;
how much was spent;
on what;
how much is owed;
how much is spent on salaries;
how much on pensions;
how much on administration;
and what liabilities remain.
Transparency will protect both the University and honest administrators.
- Establishan independent University Reform Commission
The provincial government should constitute a small, credible commission consisting of:
senior academics;
financial-management experts;
higher-education specialists;
auditors;
alumni representatives;
student representatives;
and independent civil-society members.
Its mandate should be to produce a five-year recovery plan with measurable targets.
And the provincial government must understand one more thing, this is no longer an issue that can remain confined to the offices of the Chief Minister, Higher Education Department, Finance Department or University administration.
The University of Peshawar belongs to the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Its graduates are spread across the province, Pakistan and the world. Its teachers have educated generations of civil servants, doctors, engineers, scientists, journalists, lawyers, entrepreneurs and political leaders. Its students come from ordinary families who see education as their route out of poverty.
If the government continues to ignore their concerns, the consequences will not remain confined to university employees.
Public frustration will inevitably grow and when an institution of such historic importance is allowed to deteriorate while students are charged increasingly higher fees, employees remain unpaid and valuable public assets are discussed as possible sources of revenue, the issue can become a broader public and political accountability question.
The government should not wait until anger spills onto the streets. It should act while the situation can still be resolved through dialogue, reform and responsible public policy.
If the provincial government fails to address the crisis meaningfully, it should understand that it may eventually face the brunt of public anger, sustained civic pressure and political consequences from students, parents, alumni, employees and the wider public.
That is not a threat. It is the predictable consequence of ignoring a public institution that belongs to the people.
This is not about one political party, the University of Peshawar’s decline should not become another partisan argument. The deterioration has accumulated over successive administrations and governments. The issue is bigger than any political party.
It is about whether Khyber Pakhtunkhwa believes that higher education is a public investment or merely another expenditure to be cut when budgets become difficult.
It is about whether the province wants universities that produce knowledge and innovation or institutions that merely struggle to pay salaries.
It is about whether we will preserve our educational assets for future generations or consume them to solve today’s financial problems and it is about whether public institutions will be governed professionally or politically.
We still have time to save it, the University of Peshawar is not beyond rescue. It has something many institutions would give anything to possess such as history, reputation, human capital, alumni, land, academic infrastructure and public goodwill. But goodwill will not pay the pension bill. History will not balance the budget. Land sales will not solve the structural problem. Fee increases will not attract students. And emergency bailouts will not create institutional sustainability.
What the University needs is a new social contract. The government must provide predictable core funding. The University administration must provide professional management and accountability.
Faculty must embrace academic innovation.
Students must be given affordable and quality education.
Alumni must mobilise their expertise and resources.
And the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa must demand transparency.
The University belongs to all of us, as someone who walked through the University’s corridors as a Botany student between 1985 and 1988, I cannot watch its decline silently. Many of us who studied there owe part of our professional and intellectual lives to this institution.
We may have left the campus decades ago. But the University never really leaves us. It remains our alma mater.
That is why this is not simply a call for another government grant. It is a call for institutional accountability and collective responsibility.
Let us investigate what went wrong.
Let us hold those responsible accountable, whoever they may be.
Let us protect the University’s land and assets
Let us reform its financial management.
Let us rationalise expenditure.
Let us modernise its academic programmes.
Let us make education affordable again.
Let us establish a sustainable pension system.
Let us rebuild its research capacity.
Let us bring its alumni back into the University’s life.
And above all, let us restore the University’s dignity.
The University of Peshawar was built by generations. It must not be dismantled by one generation.
SAVE PESHAWAR UNIVERSITY
Save its land.
Save its academic legacy.
Save its students.
Save its teachers.
Save its research.
Save its autonomy.
Save its future.
Because when we save the University of Peshawar, we are not saving a building or an administration, we are saving the intellectual future of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
