Solutions are needed at three distinct levels - determining correct funding priorities, implementing approved plans and projects responsibly, and, most importantly, inducing changes in values to promote and enable real learning.Current spending priorities are the haphazard expression of individual whims, not actual needs. For example, most Pakistani students in higher education (about 0.8 million) study in about 700 colleges. These colleges receive pitifully small funding compared to universities. During 2001-2004, the funds annually allocated to colleges averaged a miserable sum of Rs 0.48 billion and the spending per college student was only one sixth that for a university student. Subsequently this has become worse. It is no surprise then that public colleges are in desperate shape with dilapidated buildings, broken furniture, and laboratory and library facilities that exist only in name.Meanwhile, many public universities are awash in funds. They have gone on a shopping binge for all kinds of gadgetry - fax machines, fancy multimedia projectors, and electricity-guzzling airconditioners. But it would be hard to argue that any of this has served to improve teaching quality even marginally.