TENURE Track System (TTS) faculty members—many of whom returned to their homeland after earning accolades from global institutions—are now trapped in a nightmare of bureaucratic inertia, financial suffocation and institutionalized humiliation.
Their crime?
Choosing to serve a nation that rewards their intellectual labour with systemic ostracism, punitive policies and a master-slave mindset masked as governance.
This is not merely a story of administrative incompetence; it is a damning indictment of a system engineered to break the very people tasked with rebuilding it.
Introduced in 2005 as a “merit-based” alternative to the stagnant Basic Pay Scale (BPS), the TTS was marketed as a golden ticket for scholars: faster promotions, competitive salaries and a chance to modernize Pakistan’s academia.
Two decades later, the scheme has morphed into a Faustian bargain.
TTS faculty now sink in a limbo where their salaries—static since 2021—are eroded by hyperinflation, retroactive taxation and the absence of pensions.
Meanwhile, the Higher Education Commission (HEC), the Orwellian overseer of this farce, treats them not as assets but as fugitives, demanding feudal-era bonds, property pledges and affidavits that reduce scholars to supplicants.
Consider the case of one academic, accepted for a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Edinburgh in 2023.
After a two-year bureaucratic slumber, the HEC abruptly demanded he appear for an interview the next morning via an email sent at 11 PM.
The fellowship itself—a paltry £1,146 monthly—is less than the UK’s minimum wage for undergraduates, let alone a senior researcher.
To access even this meagre sum, he must submit a 23-page dossier of notarized documents, including a “Surety Bond” binding his family’s property and a “Guarantee” from a government officer vouching for his financial “soundness.
” The message is clear: You are guilty until proven innocent.
This is not oversight; it is academic colonization.
The HEC’s policies mirror the British Raj’s “divide and rule” tactics, pitting TTS against BPS faculty in a zero-sum game while both groups drown in shared despair.
The HEC’s obsession with punitive paperwork—evident in the 34 clauses of its “Deed of Agreement”—reveals a colonial mindset frozen in time.
Scholars must pledge to: Not seek citizenship abroad (Clause 5), Not protest HEC’s policies (Clause 26), Forfeit their passports if deemed “non-compliant” (Clause 19), Serve three years in Pakistan post-fellowship (Clause 23), Surrender 25% of their earnings as “penalty” for any perceived breach (Clause 29).
These terms are not contractual obligations; they are intellectual indentureship.
The subtext?
You dared to seek knowledge abroad; now you will pay for it.
Meanwhile, the HEC’s operational ethos is best summarized by its handling of the Rs.1.5 billion “salary relief” for TTS faculty.
After years of litigation, the funds—intended to offset a 35% pay gap with BPS—have sparked a gruesome debate: Should the money be distributed equally, allocated by seniority or dumped into a “fund” (as one academic sarcastically suggested)?
The HEC’s silence is deafening.
Its apathy has turned scholars into beggars, forced to lobby for crumbs.
Pakistan’s academia is bleeding talent.
A 2025 survey by the All Pakistan Tenure Track Association (APTTA) found that 68% of TTS faculty are actively seeking opportunities abroad.
Their reasons are visceral: A TTS professor’s salary, after taxes, cannot cover rent in Islamabad’s A-Type houses—a cruel irony given that BPS faculty receive subsidized housing.
Scholars are taxed on past earnings without warning, a practice reflecting “being fined for breathing.
” Promotions come without pay raises, reducing career advancement to a hollow ritual.
Dr Asif Ali, APTTA’s Chairman, summarizes the despair: “We are not asking for luxuries.
We are asking to survive.
” Yet survival is a privilege in a system where the HEC’s “Post-Doctoral Fellowship Programme” feels less like an opportunity and more like a hostage negotiation.
The HEC’s conduct is not merely incompetent—it is strategically oppressive.
Its policies are designed to infantilize scholars, strip them of agency, and reinforce a hierarchy where clerks wield power over PhDs.
Consider the fellowship’s stipend: £1,146 monthly in the UK, where the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Edinburgh is £900.
This forces scholars to either deliver pizza’s while doing their postdocto supplement their finances or abandon their research.
The state’s role is equally culpable.
By outsourcing academic policy to a body that operates like a colonial-era tax collector, the government absolves itself of accountability.
When the Islamabad High Court recently ordered the HEC to address salary disparities, the Commission responded with spreadsheets, not solutions.
The APTTA’s recent “victory”—a court-mandated salary adjustment—is a hollow one.
Without systemic reform, the 35% pay gap will remain a moving target, and the Rs.1.5 billion will evaporate like monsoon rain in a desert.
Pakistan’s treatment of its academics is a national suicide pact.
The TTS saga exposes a truth too uncomfortable to acknowledge: a state that despises intellect cannot progress.
When scholars are taxed for returning, punished for excelling, and gaslit into gratitude, the message to the next generation is unambiguous: Leave, and never look back.
The HEC’s motto—“Quality Education for All”—issuperficial.
Until Pakistan dismantles its bureaucratic machinery of humiliation, its universities will remain monuments to wasted potential and its brightest minds will continue fleeing a sinking ship.
The brain drain is not a crisis; it is a verdict.
—The writer is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and currently serves as a Senior Research Fellow at the College for Social Sciences and Humanities, TU RUHR, Essen, Germany.
