Essays on the Economics of Higher Education in Pakistan

Abstract

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan enacted important reforms offering scholarships for students and incentivizing teachers in public sector universities by adding the option of hiring through the Tenure Track System (TTS), which contains higher salary packages as compared to the Basic Pay Scale (BPS). Primarily, the aim of the incentive is to increase the quality of research productivity. This study consists of three research essays on the impact of TTS on higher education outcomes in Pakistan. The first essay provides an overview of higher education in Pakistan. For that purpose, we utilize the data from the HEC and numerous other sources. The study uses trend analysis as its methodological framework and presents evidence suggesting that the HEC has played a significant role in promoting higher education (through these reforms?). HEC started its reforms in 2002 and set targets to improve access, relevancy, and quality. The number of universities, teaching faculty (both PhD and Non-PhD), academic research papers, citations, and PhD graduates increased, but efficiency did not rise to the desired level. Female enrollment also increased, from 36% in 2002 to 45% in 2020. Total enrollment increased from 0.27 million to 1.99 million in 2020. In addition to the trend analysis, we conducted Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) with 25 HEC officials who have been involved in policy implementation. The KIIs suggest that the deteriorating budgetary situation, lack of cooperation among public sector universities, and questions surrounding the HEC’s autonomy are major challenges to the HEC in promoting an effective and inclusive higher education in Pakistan. The second essay aims at estimating the consequences for their research productivity of university teachers’ decisions to opt for the TTS mode of appointment as compared to BPS. For that purpose, we conducted an online survey of university teachers and obtained 359 responses. Six indicators of research productivity are used: a composite index for research productivity, an index for international research activities, an index for national level research activities, the number of PhDs produced, authorship of books, and the H-Index. The Heckman type treatment effect model is applied to try to obtain the counterfactual impact of TTS on research productivity as compared to BPS faculty at public sector universities. The results suggest that TTS hired teachers are more research productive than BPS-hired teachers. 1 The third and final essay focuses on estimating the impact of TTS mode of employment on research productivity at the university level. The treatment variable is the ratio of TTS faculty to the total faculty, while outcome variables include PhDs produced, H-Index, number of research papers published, and citations. The results indicate a linkage between universities with a higher ratio of TTS faculty with a higher level of research productivity. However, pertaining to the limitation of comprehensive data causality could not be established. While not definitive, the results of the study corroborate the literature that incentivizing university teachers, in our case through Tenure Track System, can lead to higher research productivity. Key Words: University, Research productivity, Citation, H-Index, faculty, Tenure Track.