KARACHI, Sept 6: Under the new tenure programme approved by the prime minister two days ago, remunerations of university professors will be increased on the basis of their performance and Pakistan will become the only country in the world where a professor will be paid more than a federal minister.

This was stated by the chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Dr Attaur Rehman, at a press conference on Thursday at the HEC office in the University of Karachi.

He said that this step would help reverse the brain drain of young people leaving the country. Highlighting the government’s education policies, Dr Atta said that the government had decided to promote research activities in 13 areas of science and technology such as agriculture, fishing and engineering.

He said that the HEC had come up with 4,000 e-books of around 220 publishers on various subjects that could be accessed by the public sector institutions and its students for free while the private sector institutions would have to pay a nominal fee to avail the facility.

Informing the audience about scholarships, the HEC chairman said that Rs35 billion had been allocated for scholarships and this year the number of students had been increased from 25 to 1,000 and apart from that 500 foreign faculty members had been hired on a long as well as on a short term basis.

Referring to the tenure track system for universities’ professors, he said that the universities under this system would give advertisements in newspapers and all the applications would then be assessed by the foreign staff and faculty if selected. This system would be applicable to the posts of assistant professor to professor, he added.

“However, those who make impressive progress and get selected due to their extraordinary performance will benefit from it,” he said.

Dr Atta said that the salary of an assistant professor would be increased from Rs80,000 to Rs162,000, that of a associate professor from Rs120,000 to Rs225,000 and that of a professor from Rs180,000 to Rs312,000.