PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: Higher education participation hits 7.8%
Higher Education Commission Chairman Javaid R Laghari has said that in 2008 the participate rate in higher education in Pakistan was 2.5%, but after commission initiatives it has reached 7.8% and the government has a vision to increase the figure to 15% by 2020, reports The International News.In an address to Punjab University Vice-chancellor Mujahid Bamran and other staff, Laghari said that the greatest challenge was to reach out to the people in remote areas and financially support students who could not afford higher education. He said unfortunately, Pakistan was way behind other Muslim countries in the field of education, adding that there were more than 12,000 research publications a year produced in Iran while Pakistani universities were producing 6,000 to 7,000 research publications annually.
Laghari said Pakistan needed qualified faculty for research. On average 25% academics have PhDs in the country, although the proportion was 40% at Punjab University which was also producing 100 PhDs a year in a country where all universities collectively produced only 700 doctoral graduates last year.
Full report on The International News site