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Pakistan’s universities produce credentials for roles that no longer exist or are increasingly disassociated from the labour market. A quick glance at the latest Labour Force Survey reveals the scale of the problem. Unemployment currently stands at 7.1 per cent, leaving 5.9 million people out of work. Among those aged 15 to 24, the rate rises to 12.8pc. More than 28pc of young Pakistanis are neither in employment, education nor training, while among young women the figure exceeds 45pc. Under the new international definition, 80.8pc of all employment is informal.
Pakistan has 278 universities, while the Higher Education Commission’s (HEC) FY26 snapshot puts total higher-education enrolment, including digital learning, at almost 2.4m. These students are spread across different years and programmes, with roughly half a million completing their degrees annually. Yet neither the HEC, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS_ nor the universities collectively can answer one elementary question: what happened to last year’s graduating class? This is a classic case of selective disclosure, where institutions reveal what flatters them and withhold what might expose them to scrutiny.
