Pakistan May Send Afghan Medical Students Home Mid-Degree

Pakistan’s Medical and Dental Council ordered universities and colleges on September 1 to send enrolled Afghan medical and dental students home and barred new Afghan admissions, transfers and migrations for the academic year. More than 200 Afghan students are enrolled, according to the regulator, and most are affected. At one Lahore college, nearly two dozen names appeared on an expulsion list circulated on September 8; students said they received less than three days to prepare to leave.

The PMDC says foreign students must be registered with it and that only 22 Afghan students are registered: 14 graduates and eight approaching graduation. Yet many of those now threatened entered through the Allama Iqbal Scholarship, administered by Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission with its embassy in Kabul. Students told Al Jazeera that neither their colleges nor government agencies warned them that a separate PMDC registration was required.

That distinction determines who receives the bill. If institutions admitted students, accepted scholarship money, assigned laboratory work and placed them on hospital wards without completing a mandatory registration, expulsion transfers the full cost of an administrative failure to the least powerful customer. The student loses tuition, rent, examination fees, travel expenses and time. The college and the state keep the years already consumed.

A half-finished medical degree is not half of a usable medical qualification. Clinical placements depend on verified hours and supervisor signatures. Laboratory courses require recognized syllabuses. Examinations must match another school’s sequence. A transcript is portable only when another institution agrees to read it, and even a willing institution may reject credits if the PMDC now questions the original enrollment.

The losses extend beyond receipts. Each interrupted year postpones professional wages and reduces the period in which a graduate can practice. For Afghan women, return carries an additional barrier: students say Pakistan is the only country available to them where they can study medicine. Sending them home may therefore suspend training indefinitely rather than merely change its location.

Students should immediately obtain sealed and digital transcripts, fee statements, scholarship terms, course descriptions, examination results, clinical logbooks, supervisor letters, attendance records and copies of every admission, visa and registration notice. They should store those records outside college email accounts and ask each institution to certify the date and status of every document. A social-media image of an expulsion list is not an adequate academic record.

Pakistan can still avoid writing off the investment it sponsored. The PMDC and Higher Education Commission could create a temporary registration window, audit each admission file, preserve lawful status during review and guarantee teach-out or transfer arrangements for students who relied on official scholarships and college approvals. If removal still proceeds, authorities should require prompt transcripts, credit certification and transparent refund decisions. The practical question is not whether a rule exists. It is who should pay when the institutions enforcing it failed to apply it at the door.