The government on Friday released to the Higher Education Commission Rs6 billion, half of its funds, enabling it to finance its development schemes for universities and pay scholarships to thousands of students studying in different universities around the world. The HEC has been facing a shortage of Rs 12 billion, an amount not released during the fiscal year 2011-12. The HEC needed the funds for development while another Rs6 billion are required for recurring expenditures. Different teachers bodies had demanded the release of funds to avoid financial problems at institutional and personal level. Representatives of all 74 universities' associations also held a meeting with the HEC director on Thursday and presented their demands. Described as an 'engine of change' and 'harbinger of a 'knowledge-based economy' when the HEC was established during the Musharraf regime, this institution is also confronting a challenge from authorities concerned who want to do away with the HEC's financial and administrative autonomy and issued on June 11 this year to devolve HEC to the Ministry of Professional and Technical Training and the institution decided to fight its way out of the crisis. The commission reacted to the notification that was also slapped on the HEC in 2010 and the Supreme Court, on a petition, observed that a notification could not undo an act of parliament under which the commission was established. The HEC would again move the SC to get a permanent solution to the repeated threat. But before moving the apex court, the commission plans to write a letter to the cabinet division demanding the notification be withdrawn because it violates the HEC law and SC's orders. The HEC, thus, has landed in double jeopardy of shortage of funds and losing its autonomy at the hands of certain vested interests in the government who want to wrap up the HEC functioning making it a hireling of the executive at the expense of the scholarly task the commission is up to. The Council of Common Interests decided last year that the federal government would fund the universities and maintain a monitoring role of the HEC until at least the next National Finance Commission (NFC) award is announced in 2014 but it now appeared that the education sector was not in the rulers' priorities. Over 100 projects, including infrastructure development, new labs, hostels, class rooms, buildings and campus requirements, which are 70 per cent complete were stopped because of non-release of funds. Similarly, about 600 scholars are waiting for funds to study at institutions abroad, including Germany, Korea, Italy and China. About 700 selected under local scholarship schemes are also waiting for funds. They include students from Balochistan and the FATA.