With the creation of the state of Pakistan in 1947, only one university existed on the Pakistani side of the partition line--the University of the Punjab. In the ensuing 50 years of statehood, expanding tertiary education enrollments have outpaced the construction of new colleges and universities. Today, Pakistan has 28 public and private universities and over 100 "affiliated" or "constituent" colleges, technical training institutes, teacher training schools, and other specialized institutions. Despite a policy enacted during the Zia-ul-Haq regime in the 1980s to gradually replace English by Urdu, higher education continues to be conducted mostly in English.

In the early 1970s, education was nationalized under the Bhutto regime, effectively ending private education in Pakistan. Grants for funding universities were dispensed by each province. In 1979, the federal government assumed control over all university grants, ensuring a centralized administration of the country's university system. Today, 67 percent of all public university income comes from these federal grants. Additionally, all appointments of faculty and administrators are made by the Ministry of Education, thereby depriving universities of any autonomy whatsoever. In the mid-1980s, private educational institutions were again allowed to operate, on the condition that they uphold standards.

While the state has assumed increasingly greater control over the financing and administration of higher education through the years, the country has been rocked by severe political upheaval and economic decline. Successive governments have failed to impose an acceptable rule of law within the country. The lawlessness, corruption, nepotism, and intense intergroup conflict of Pakistani society have become a part of the higher education system as well.

Pakistani governments have never given high priority to the educational sector (education is not even compulsory), spending a smaller percentage of its national budget on education than any of its poor South Asian neighbors. This is further exacerbated by the ongoing decline of the economy. The result has been a grossly underfunded public higher education system unable to pay decent salaries, maintain libraries, purchase minimal supplies, or even keep physical facilities from crumbling. Student and faculty morale is extremely low. Research is practically nonexistent. Class schedules are frequently not respected, and the academic year is regularly disrupted by myriad political and administrative conflicts. There is a near unanimity among Pakistanis that the nation's public higher education system is a disaster.

Nevertheless, the number of young people seeking higher education continues to grow sharply each year, as the return on university studies is still quite high. With the state incapable of keeping pace with this growth--coupled with a national policy to stimulate the Pakistani private sector--the government has tacitly allowed the private higher education system to expand with minimal oversight. Six new universities have recently been awarded charters by the Ministry of Education, with another six under review. Bright spots in this booming private sector are institutions such as the Aga Khan University and Hamdard University in Karachi, and the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore. They offer high-quality instruction and excellent facilities, albeit at rates that few Pakistani families can afford. But many other private institutions have been opened that have not come under the purview of any official body and that violate basic ethical, if not legal, standards in attracting their paying customers. Indeed, many private institutions are now exhibiting free-wheeling, unregulated, and brazen market tactics, where corruption, smuggling, counterfeiting, and trademark infringement are the rule.

Pakistanis perceive American university studies as superior to all others, and thus as something to be sought in America if they can afford it, or purchased locally if not. With the growing disaffection with the public system, the upper classes able to afford the $500 to $3,000 annual tuition are flocking to the local American alternatives. In the last five years, a hodgepodge of private institutions has arisen that bill themselves as full-fledged, accredited, branch American universities, or as affiliated with American universities and awarding degrees from their American affiliate. The majority of these claims are fraudulent, underlining their "foreign-trained" faculty as a guarantee of quality.

Pakistanis are ill-equipped to evaluate such claims and generally assume that American universities are worthy of their trust. The "American" degree they receive is assumed to guarantee international recognition and access to higher-level studies anywhere in the world. Some local institutions are working in conjunction with accredited American universities that have opted to sell their names and their degrees for fairly lucrative returns. Other institutions are simply groups of investors who have obtained business licenses in Utah, Iowa, Hawaii, etc., under the name of "University of . . . ," and who then open up their schools in Pakistan as "off-shore" operations. Still others are merely bogus schools in rented facilities that claim affiliation with nonexistent, but American-sounding, universities. Faced with court challenges as to the legality of their operations, some have simply informed the court that as "American" universities, they are not obliged to abide with Pakistani regulations.

While the existence of "pirate" universities and multinational diploma mills is a worldwide phenomenon, the magnitude of the problem in Pakistan has led the University Grants Commission to consider, rightly, that these institutions constitute a threat to higher education. Because increasing numbers of graduates of questionable institutions now are requesting official recognition of their degrees to take government jobs, UGC bureaucrats have come under strong pressure from influential groups to do so.

The growth of private higher education has had some positive impacts. Private universities generally pay much higher salaries, and the best ones offer quality libraries and research facilities. They tend to respond to the public's demand for modern, hands-on, practical training in business and technology majors. The schools are free to offer innovative curricula, unconstrained by bureaucratic demands to adhere to an outdated, set program. They usually offer more appealing learning environments that are free of political conflict and physical decay. And they have caused public universities to take a closer look at their own responsiveness to the needs of students and the market. The top public university, Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, while ensuring merit-based access and virtually free education for most students, has enacted a policy of setting aside a quota of places in its MBA program for students paying full tuition (over $1,200 per year) in order to increase revenue. This will probably result in a greater effort to raise standards and make the program competitive with the top private ones. This scheme is being offered at the International Islamic University as well, and will be introduced in other public universities throughout the country.

The rise of private education in countries such as Pakistan, where the state is unable to provide and regulate adequate social services and to oversee the functioning of the market, is certainly a two-edged sword. Will the current anarchic and exploitative nature of much of private higher education be stemmed by legal constraints and weeded out by market forces and be replaced by a quality option that will also stimulate the public institutions to needed reform? Or will it deepen the frustration of most Pakistanis seeking higher education who are disillusioned with public education, but who see the quality option as the privilege of the wealthy? In Pakistan, the future of private higher education will depend on the existence of a strong state dedicated to maintaining social, economic, and political order.