Pakistani university academics held large demonstrations last week to protest deep cuts in the country’s higher-education budget and delays in distributing funds from last year’s budget. For the current year, Parliament approved a higher-education research budget of $166 million, well below the almost $270 million requested by the Higher Education Commission. In addition, Parliament has yet to provide the commission with about $48 million from last year’s budget. The financial stress has hampered many research and university projects, and the Higher Education Commission says it is unable to pay employees’ salaries because of the delay.