The Higher Education Commission Pakistan (HEC) has announced a series of reforms aimed at modernising Pakistan’s higher education sector and aligning it with national and global needs. Addressing a media briefing, HEC Chairman Niaz Ahmad Akhtar said the Commission has made a three-credit-hour Artificial Intelligence course mandatory for undergraduate programmes and is introducing measures to improve Outcome-Based Education, strengthen Offices of Research, Innovation and Commercialization (ORICs), and shift degree attestation to a fully online system. He said committees have been formed to enhance universities’ performance in global rankings such as the QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education World University Rankings, while provincial reform committees and the P-5 strategic consortium will promote coordination and strengthen engineering and technology institutions. The Chairman also highlighted efforts to improve merit-based admissions, review academic programmes in key disciplines, ensure that new universities are established only with HEC’s NOC, fill vacant administrative posts, and promote applied research and entrepreneurship. He added that under the government’s laptop scheme 65,000 laptops have already been distributed among students, expressing confidence that these initiatives will help Pakistan’s universities better contribute to national development and compete in the global academic landscape.