ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and the United States have renewed their higher education partnership through a new five-year agreement between the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and the United States Educational Foundation in Pakistan (USEFP), signed by USEFP Executive Director Dr Peter Moran and HEC Executive Director Professor Dr Ziaul Haq at USEFP headquarters in Islamabad on Tuesday.

The agreement runs from financial year 2026–27 to 2031–32 and covers the Fulbright Master’s and PhD programmes, the Visiting Scholar Programme for post-doctoral researchers, the Foreign Language Teaching Assistant scheme and the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship. Sixty-six Pakistani scholars are to be supported through PhD study over the period.

HEC will contribute at least $4.54 million a year, with its total commitment capped at Rs6.48 billion across the five years. The commission will sit on selection panels and help identify priority fields aligned with national development and security needs, while a joint review committee meets twice yearly and USEFP supplies annual audited accounts. The pact builds on the 2016 Fulbright–HEC PhD arrangement, under which $25.786 million supported 125 scholars.

David Moyer, acting minister counsellor for public diplomacy at the US embassy, said Washington was proud to renew the partnership; USEFP has run exchanges for 75 years, involving more than 9,000 Pakistanis and close to 1,000 Americans.

The signing came a day before Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz met Acting US Ambassador Natalie A. Baker in Lahore, where the two discussed education, security, artificial intelligence, digital assets and energy, and agreed to explore US expertise on flood management and smog — education holding as a durable strand of the relationship amid turbulent regional politics.