The Structural Blind Spot in Visiting Faculty Policy
The Higher Education Commission’s recent guidelines on visiting faculty engagement represent a welcome and necessary step toward greater regulatory coherence in Pakistan’s higher education system. The formal recognition of visiting faculty within a structured policy framework reflects an important acknowledgement of their role in sustaining academic delivery across institutions.
At the same time, the implementation realities across higher education institutions point to a deeper structural concern that requires sustained policy attention.
In many HEIs, visiting faculty are no longer supplementary contributors. They now carry substantial responsibility for core teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, often ensuring continuity in areas where permanent staffing remains insufficient. This shift has made them integral to the functioning of the system, even when their institutional positioning has not fully caught up with this reality.
Within this context, three persistent gaps continue to define the structural experience of visiting faculty:
First, remuneration remains highly fragmented across institutions, with no unified national framework. This produces wide disparities within a single academic labour market, undermining the principle of coherence in public higher education.
Second, payment cycles are frequently misaligned with academic calendars. In several cases, remuneration is delayed beyond semester completion, creating a condition of sustained financial uncertainty that affects professional stability.
Third, teaching experience acquired through visiting appointments is inconsistently recognized in recruitment and promotion frameworks. This weakens academic continuity and limits structured career progression within the sector.
Taken together, these conditions reflect a growing reliance on academic labour that is not yet fully integrated into a stable institutional architecture.
The policy question is no longer limited to regulating engagement. It is increasingly about ensuring coherence between three foundational elements of the academic system: labour, compensation, and career progression.
A sustainable higher education framework will ultimately require movement beyond guideline-based recognition toward enforceable alignment in three key areas: national remuneration standardization, strict adherence to payment timelines aligned with academic calendars, and formal integration of visiting teaching experience into academic career structures.
The strength of the current HEC initiative lies in its attempt to bring structure to a previously fragmented domain. Its long-term impact, however, will depend on how effectively regulatory clarity is translated into consistent institutional practice.
Respectfully shared in the spirit of strengthening implementation and supporting a higher education system in which those sustaining core teaching functions are situated within a stable, coherent, and predictable institutional framework.
