No Pak university could make place among top 500 world universities

Islamabad: No Pakistani university could make place among the top 500 world universities, revealed by Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2016, the most reputed higher education ranking agency.

Only two Pakistani universities could succeed to make place among the world’s top 800 universities including Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU), Islamabad and National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad. QAU ranked at 501-600 while NUST ranked 601-800.

This year’s list of the best universities in the world features 147 of the top universities in the US with 63 American universities making the top 200 of the list, including the California Institute of Technology (Caltec) as the world’s number one university, followed by Stanford University in third place, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in fifth and Harvard University in sixth position.

But the US has been losing its dominance of the tables, as institutions in Europe improve their performance, including those in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The UK is the second best represented country in the rankings, with 78 universities in the top 800, and 34 in the top 200. The UK’s Oxford University is ranked second in the world, with Cambridge University in fourth. This year’s ranking also marks the first time a university outside the US and the UK has made the top 10 for a decade.

Asia has seen a varied performance, with good news for Singapore, which now claims the top institution in the continent with National University of Singapore (NUS) in 26th place. China has two top fifty universities (Peking University and Tsinghua University while Japan and South Korea have suffered declining performance.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2015-2016 has listed the best global universities across all of their core missions - teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

As compared to two Pakistani universities among top 800 universities, 17 are from India, 37 from China, 8 from Iran, 11 from Turkey, 06 from Israel, 03 from Saudi Arabia, 5 from Malaysia, 24 from South Korea and 6 from Hong Kong. Earlier, no Pakistani university could make place among top 100 Asian universities, released by Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2016.

The top universities rankings employ 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available. This year’s ranking includes 800 universities from 70 different countries, compared with the 400 universities from 41 countries during the last year.

The performance indicators are grouped into five areas including teaching (the learning environment), research (volume, income and reputation), citations (research influence), international outlook (staff, students and research) and industry income (knowledge transfer).

According to World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report 2015-16, under the heads of Higher Education and Training, Pakistan’s ranking is way down at 124th out of 140 countries as compared to India at 90th, Bangladesh 122nd, Nepal 113rd, China 28th, Iran 69th, Bhutan 103rd, Qatar 27th, UAE 37th and Saudi Arabia 49th.

As per QS Higher Education System Strength Rankings 2016, Pakistani higher education system has been ranked at bottom with 9.2 score as compared to China 83.5, South Korea 80.1, Singapore 62.3, India 60.9, Chile 46.7, Saudi Arabia 36.7, Turkey 26.1, Kazakhstan 25.1, Lebanon 19.8, Ukraine 16.6 , United Arab Emirates 10.9 scores.