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Tuesday March 19, 2024

HEC criticised for flaws in its ranking system

Executive director says ranking is conducted fairly and impartially under defined standards

By Waseem Abbasi
May 31, 2015
ISLAMABAD: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has come under severe criticism from several universities for flaws in its ranking system, and some academicians are also calling for the ranking to be conducted by independent bodies as per international practices.
While accepting some flaws in data collection for ranking, HEC’s Executive Director Mansoor Akbar Kundi said the commission carried out the arduous task to the best of its abilities to help the prospective students choose the correct institution for their education.
The President of Academic Staff Association at International Islamic University (IIU), Dr Zafar Altaf, said there are serious flaws in HEC’s ranking mechanism. “The HEC relies on data collected from the quality enhancement cells of various universities, and the ranking is announced on the basis of that data without verifying the factual position. This system is flawed as some smart officials can manipulate data to get higher ranking for their universities despite actually lagging behind the other institutions,” he said.
He said last time IIU was ranked No9 by HEC in large universities, but this year the category is not mentioned in the Commission’s media release and overall ranking has been issued which put the university on No13 which could be mistaken by some as deteriorating standard of the education in the university. “The fact is IIU has improved its ranking in large universities and this time it is ranked No5, but the same is not reflected under the new system.”
He said the Commission quickly changes its ranking criterion without informing the universities.
Similarly, the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) also raised objections to the recent ranking and expressed doubts about the ranking procedure,
According to LUMHS Registrar Dr Bux Ali Pitafi, the objections were raised in a meeting of all deans, chairpersons and directors of departments that was held under the chairmanship of Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Noshad A Shaikh.
“Senior faculty and administrative officers pointed out that the authenticity of the ranking is tainted by the fact that some universities, which have the charter of general university such as Isra University Hyderabad and Riphah International University Islamabad, have been listed under the category of medical universities. This speaks volumes about the ineptness of the ranking process.”
Globally the rankings are done by neutral bodies without any conflict of interest such The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings, US News College rankings, QS University rankings, and Maclean’s University rankings (Canada). Therefore, it was announced publicly during the previous ranking of 2013 of HEC that next ranking will be conducted through a third party according to international practices. Another commitment of HEC and long due public demand for subject based ranking could also not be fulfilled by HEC this year although, much time was taken to announce it but scope, accuracy, international compatibility and credibility has been made further limited.
Few of the important criteria such as international outlook and employers’ perception, peer perception or student feedback surveys are totally ignored in current ranking.
According to experts, few of the smaller universities and the ones against public perception are ranked higher due to statistical biases or use of unverified data that is questioned by public at large for its credibility.
The experts believe HEC lacks capacity and system to verify data provided by universities; therefore, anomalies are reflected in the ranking lists.
When contacted, HEC Executive Director said each university claims to be the best in the country, but HEC had set out specific parameters to rank the institutions.
He said the HEC officials worked very hard to make the task possible despite facing difficulties.
Mansoor Akbar Kundi admitted that the HEC collected data from the universities and some of the universities did not give correct data.
“We did send our officials to some institutions, but there are so many universities in the country, so it was not possible for HEC to send its representatives to all of these universities,” he said.
However, he claimed that the ranking was conducted fairly and impartially according to defined standards. He said a top university of management sciences lost its place in ranking because it did not have quality enhancement cell which has 10 numbers in ranking.
“It is a thankless job, but it is very important for the future of our next generation,” he said. When asked why third party is not conducting ranking, he said Pakistan is a developing country, and it is yet to have such an undisputed independent institution with the capacity to rank university.