Owais Mughal
Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan has recently released the university rankings of Pakistan. The rankings are generating so much interest that I am receiving four to five emails daily with people forwarding me the same link to HEC’s ranking web page. (Scroll down to see rankings and details).
I am kind of disappointed with my alma-mater, NED University of Engineering and Technology Karachi, ranked at number 10 out of the 13 Engineering Universities of Pakistan. The photo to the right-below shows few views of NED University.
I genuinely and of course with a little bias think that NED university should have been ranked among the top 3. When I make such claim; I do it on the basis of sheer engineering talent I’ve personally seen at NED. But rankings do not take into account the student talent. They look at finances, faculty, number of students etc. My university mates as well as the university officials have already started the discussion on how to improve the rankings next year. This discussion is going on at many NED online alumni groups. I am sure similar discussions are going on within other university alumni too. This I think, is a positive sign of publishing a list like this as it does create competition.
Here are the key leaders in the ranking:
Agriculture / Veterinary
1. University of Agriculture (UAF), Faisalabad
2. NWFP University of Agriculture , Peshawar
3. University of Arid Agriculture, Rawalpindi
4. Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam
Art / Design
1. National College of Arts, Lahore
2. Textile Institute of Pakistan, Karachi
3. Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture, Karachi
Business / I.T.
1. Lahore Uni. of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore
2. Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi
3. Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Sci. & Tech. Karachi
4. Iqra University, Defence View, Karachi
5. Lahore School of Economics (LSE) , Lahore
6. Institute of Business Management (IBM), Karachi
Engineering
1. Pakistan Institute of Engg. and Applied Sciences, Islamabad
2. National University of Sciences & Technology Rawalpindi
3. Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering, Swabi
4. University of Engg. & Technology (UET), Lahore
5. Mehran University of Engg. & Technology (MUET), Jamshoro
6. University of Engg. & Technology (UET), Taxila
General
1. Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU), Islamabad
2. University of the Punjab, Lahore
3. University of Karachi, Karachi
4. University of Peshawar, Peshawar
5. Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan
6. Government College Lahore University, Lahore
Health Sciences
1. Aga Khan University, Karachi
2. Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Jamshoro
3. Baqai Medical University, Karachi
4. Zia-ud-din Medical University, Karachi
You can have a look at the complete rankings, including the scores, the criteria and the methodology of scoring here. I would like to hear your opinion.
ATP’s another post related to University Education and rankings system can be seen here.
[quote comment=”3912″]
it the same story in pakistan…….over and over again……..
starting and then falling in a free fall[/quote]
or it could be, GIK is where it was and NUST prospered. Its all relative as you know.
Note that NUST is a military establishment (two swords in the emblem) and they would have nothing but the best. As far as I can see, until its H12 campus is ready (when?), NUST consists of a bunch of colleges, mostly of military nature, spread across the nation. These colleges were one presumes already well funded but since the NUST initiative they must have had a big boost in funding and that may be the result of better ranking.
[quote comment=”3819″]An interesting point for me is NUST is now above GIK among Engineering Universities. GIK was established as a de-facto center of excellence but it has fallen down to # 3.[/quote]
it the same story in pakistan…….over and over again……..
starting and then falling in a free fall
[quote comment=”3823″]NUST H12 Master Plan; http://www.nust.edu.pk/images/NUST MASTER PLAN NewII.jpg [NUST H12 Master Plan;
(http://www.nust.edu.pk/images/NUST MASTER PLAN NewII.jpg)
A university with a golf course. That’s a first in Pakistan?
Eat your heart out UET, NED, Giki.[/quote]
ok…..we will………but hope u have a nice time lawn mowing golf courses when u grow up
[quote comment=”3832″]This post and the comments led me to look up the HEC website for the first time, which in turn made me look up all the ‘chartered’ universities in Pakistan. Much more than their number (which seems to have increased many folds in the past 5-10 years) what struck me was the names of some these institutions of higher learning. Strange names, some of them, and curious descriptions of their visions and other details.
There is Superior University in Lahore whose website boasts: “Getting chartered by the Government of Punjab as Degree Awarding Institute is a unique honor for Superior University. Several other institutions had applied for the same status but are struggling since long. Superior infrastructure attracted and satisfied the Punjab Government Higher Education Department as per their standards and requirements and finally we got it (Alhamdulillah).”
Then there is a Preston University in Kohat. Apparently there is no such person as Mr. Preston associated with the university in any capacity. They just picked up the name, it seems, from the basket. Is it because it sounds like Princeton?
Then there is NICE University. The acronym stands for Newports or Newport (the website uses both) Institute of Communications and Economics. What’s its connection with Newport, anywhere, one can’t figure out.
Then we have University of East in Hyderabad! (Go figure it out for yourself.)
We also have Air University in Islamabad. In Urdu it would probably translate into Hawaii University?
And then we have this university called GIFT that boasts to be the only university between Lahore and Islamabad. GIFT stands for — alvipervaiz would like this — Gujranwala Institute of Future Technologies. According to the website the university was conceived by Mr. Muhammad Anwar Dar and “The ground-breaking ceremony of the campus was performed by an eminent personality of Gujranwala Haji Aziz-ur-Rehman on 11th August 2001.” The university’s boast of being the only the university between Lahore and Islamabad, however, turns out to be false because, according to the HEC list, there is also a University of Gujrat barely 60 or 70 miles up the road.[/quote]
i wonder what you are on about……….
why dont you pick western universities such as
Kings College (badasah in urdu)
Imperial (does that mean representing imperialism)
Queens (malika)
etc
etc
you have to become positive and not negative.
Good LUCK.
[quote comment=”3755″]NED, and DMC should be there somewhere[/quote]
i guess they are your alma matter
My earlier comments on the topic were in a lighter vein. On a serious note, ranking is an American thing. And Americans are pretty good at it. They rank their colleges and universities every year and the rankings are widely published.
Ranking is a good thing. It helps the colleges to be competitive and improve and also helps the students and faculty to choose from. Those of you who work in the academia in the US would be familiar with the criteria used in ranking colleges/universities, which generally takes the following factors into account:
1. Academic Reputation: Each university is asked to rate its peers (excluding itself) on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being the lowest and 5 the highest). The total score is divided by the number of responses.
2. Student Selectivity: is derived from the number of first year student accepted compared to total numbers of student applied and their scores in the entrance tests. In other words, the smarter the students the better for the college/university.
3. Faculty Resources: is derived from the number of teachers and researchers with Ph.Ds and Master’s degrees and their salaries and benefits. In other words more qualified and better paid the teachers and researchers the better for the university.
4. Research: is derived from citations in academic journals, papers presented in international conferences, published books, research funding etc.
5. Financial Resources: is derived from 1) total spending per student, 2) library spending per student, 3) Internet bandwidth and 4) public computers and connection points, 4) laboratory spending is added for science and technology schools.
As suggested earlier on this thread, HEC will be better off by following the American system. After all, America has the best higher education system in the world. Out of the 20 top universities in the world, according to the ranking done by London Economist last year, 17 are in the US. The other three are Cambridge, Oxford and Tokyo.
Prof. Najam, I seem to recall that you had something to do with designing this new rating system and working with HEC? No?
MQ, thanks for that comment. I had noticed these funny sounding names in the past but did not make the connection between them and a general trend in naming of Pakistani universities.
I also looked up NUST’s website. Which major university have they not listed on their website in an international linkage? Is that what brings it credibility and distinction? Could they list a few research papers that their international collaborations may have generated? Unfortunately I am too used to seeing Pakistani university administrators, career bureaucrats, and politicians floating around the halls of MIT (and similar institutions) looking for some way of getting their endorsement. They come and go, with no meaningful change happening at the ground level. HEC folks are trying to help, but they have a very long way to go.