The Higher Education Commission (HEC) in Pakistan has said universities should stop running their own MS, MPhil and PhD entry tests and move admissions to GRE/HAT (Graduate Record Examination/Higher Education Aptitude Test) through its Education Testing Council. Then it pushed the rollout from Fall 2026 to Fall 2027 after universities asked for more time. So while the plug has not really been pulled, it has just been moved a little further down the wall.
If you have not been following the paperwork, that is the news in plain English. In May, HEC announced a single, standardised route for Level 7 and Level 8 admissions. A week later, it deferred the change. That small delay matters because what is being debated is not only a test but who gets to define merit in Pakistani higher education.
On paper, the logic is easy to understand. The GRE General Test measures verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing. HEC’s graduate policy has also long recognised GRE/HAT-style equivalent tests in admissions, and GRE scores are accepted by thousands of graduate schools worldwide. So yes, there is a real case for one standard, especially in a country where university-run entry tests can vary wildly in seriousness, format and fairness.
But a score is not a student. It is a snapshot of performance in one format, on one day, under one kind of pressure (usually time). It tells how fast someone reads, how comfortable they are with English academic language, how they handle timed quantitative work, and how steady they are under exam conditions. It does not tell us whether they can write a thesis, hold a seminar together, think critically and independently in a lab, or ask the awkward question that changes a field. That is the first problem: we keep mistaking what is easy to measure for what is most important.
Then comes equity. A national test only looks fair if the starting line is remotely similar. In Pakistan, it is not. Pakistan Education Statistics 2021–22 shows Balochistan with the highest share of out-of-school children, around 65 per cent, while the Islamabad Capital Territory is far lower; UNICEF also points to severe provincial gaps in school participation.
If HEC wants better international competitiveness, it cannot stop at standardisation. It has to ask whether our students are being prepared for global academic competitiveness, or only for domestic compliance
Separate research on higher education reform in Pakistan notes that urban areas have far more access to higher education, and the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics says a significant population still has no internet access. So a test may look neutral in Islamabad, but land very differently in Turbat, Thar, Gilgit or Dera Ghazi Khan.
Add money to that equation, and the picture gets uglier. GRE preparation is a business. Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers the TOEFL and GRE, even has a fee-reduction programme, which is basically an admission that the cost barrier is real enough to need its own fix. But fee waivers are not the same thing as equal access.
Coaching, repeat attempts, transport to test centres, and the time to prepare all tilt the field towards students from better-resourced families and better-funded institutions. Then, pedagogically, the danger is quite simple. When one test becomes the gate, universities and even undergraduate colleges start teaching to that gate. That can push learning towards memorisation, past paper tricks, shortcuts and coaching logic, while writing, inquiry, critical thinking and original reading get squeezed out.
There is, though, a real upside on the international side. The Educational Testing Service says GRE scores are accepted at thousands of graduate schools worldwide. A Pakistani student with a solid GRE score has a language that many foreign universities already understand. That can help international mobility in a way that a local university test usually cannot. But HAT is still a domestic instrument. So if HEC wants better international competitiveness, it cannot stop at standardisation. It has to ask whether our students are being prepared for global academic competitiveness, or only for domestic compliance.
So you see why the downsides matter so much. One paper can reward privilege, test pattern recognition and English fluency more than curiosity, originality or potential. And one central test, if badly administered, can replace many imperfect local tests with a single imperfect national one.
Pakistan does need a more credible admissions system. It just does not need another idol with a scanning sheet. The point should be to judge readiness without erasing province, class, language or circumstance. Right now, HEC has chosen standardisation. The real test is whether it can make that standardisation humane.