Junaid Siddiqui
Last year at ATP, there was a post on the HEC (Higher Education Commission)’s Ranking of Pakistani Universities. That single post generated so much interest that in the past one year it has got 30000 hits on it. It not only shows the immense interest among prospective university students but also shows lack of career counseling or guidance available to them.
I have written this article in a hope of building further on HEC’s rankings as well as to show that Pakistani universities have very far to go to make up to any internationally recognized University Ranking.
Spanish National Research Council biannually publishes Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. The raking is based on data obtained from popular search engines. Universities for this purpose are identified based on their institutional web domains. The methodology of ranking is based on the following quantitative indicators:
Size (S). Number of pages from a university’s domain recovered from search engines.
Visibility (V). The total number of unique external links received (inlinks) by a university’s site.
Rich Files (R). Number of rich files available on a university’s domain recovered from search engines. The file types considered include Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), PostScript (.ps), Microsoft Word (.doc) and Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt). This is considered as it is relevant to academic and publication activities of a university.
Scholar (Sc). Number of papers and citations for a university’s domain available on Google Scholar.
Following formula is used to rank universities:
Webometrics Rank (position)= 4*RankV+2*RankS+1*RankR+1*RankSc
The ranking criteria is quantitative is nature for which data can be easily obtained through some simple search engine queries. What is, however, interesting to note about the ranking results (last published in July 2007) is that they compare rather well with other world rankings of universities such as the Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranking or The Times World University Rankings.
SESRTCIC, a research center of OIC, has recently released a preliminary Academic Ranking of Universities in the OIC Countries, which is based on the research output data of the universities of OIC member states. Most of the top ranking Middle Eastern universities in the composite index of OIC ranking are also among the top Middle Eastern universities in the Webometrics ranking. The Webometrics ranking, therefore, seems to be a good indicator of global standing of a university.
Given that Webometrics ranking is based on quantitative parameters we can expect that a populous country like Pakistan should have at least few of its universities, let us say, in the top 2000. However when we look at the Webometrics ranking of Pakistani universities, it is disappointing to see that there are no universities in even top 3000 and there are only two universities in top 4000 rankings. They are Lahore University of Management Sciences (rank 3071), Aga Khan University, Karachi (rank 3422) and the Punjab University, Lahore (rank 4685).
Universities form the centers of intellectual and scholarly activities in any country and the Webometrics ranking of our universities is an indicator of the dismal situation we have in our country. Interestingly the two universities in top 4000 (LUMS and AKU) are the same universities that Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy identified as the two Pakistani universities closest to the universities located in free societies across the world.
Independent thought is the foundation that allows intellectual activities to flourish which seems to be missing from the fabric of most of our higher education institutions. The recent article on BBCUrdu.com about the kind of thoughts promoted at our long established Karachi University is one example of what is happening at our universities.
Whether it be the education in the disciplines of natural sciences or social sciences the situation is the same. When we go into the classrooms what we find is an environment that restricts the thinking of our students than opening it up. This is yet another aspect of our society which needs immediate and radical measures.
About the Author: Junaid Siddiqui is a Civil Engineering graduate of NED University Karachi and now a lecturer at King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals.
cannot agree more to what mahmood said,
suna tha tareekh apne aap ko duhraati hai, leikin aaesa lag raha hai ab srif side B hi repeat pe lagi hoi hia. :)
when muslim emperor was spending money to build TAJ MAHAL, ppl in the west collecting money to build universities Harvard university vs Taj Mahal, now india may be earning money by attaracting tourists from across the world but Taj Mahal (in my opinion) was a utter waste of national wealth.
About Harvard,(from Wiki)
Initially referred to simply as “the new college”, the institution was named Harvard College on March 13, 1639, after its first principal donor, a young clergyman named John Harvard. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge in England, John Harvard bequeathed about four hundred books in his will to form the basis of the college library collection, along with half his personal wealth worth several hundred pounds.
Taj Mahal:
In 1631, Shah Jahan, emperor during Mughal’s period of greatest prosperity, was griefstricken when his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, died during the birth of their fourteenth child, Gauhara Begum.The construction of Taj Mahal begun soon after Mumtaz’s death with the principal mausoleum completed in 1648.
1630-40 a couple of decades that made a big difference. In the East a king was spending lavishly to build TAJ MAHAL and in the West one rich man was donating money to build a UNIVERSITY.
when I hear of lavish lifestyle of Middle Eastern kings or in general rulers of the muslim countries I only think that we are still living in 1630’s.
Very interesting article.
I think Pakistani universities can catch up quite quickly on publications if they learn how to carry out research. In the OIC rankings you posted, Turkey seems to be far ahead in publications among OIC countries. In my field, I have came across lot of research papers with Turkish writers. I think a big portions of that reseach answer very simple questions. Even basic surveys can be a good way to produce not only acceptable research but also allow to scientifically identify local problem. A lot of research produced in the world address local experiences.
In this age of advanced communication, I think distance education can also play a positive role where Pakistanis now working abroad can somehow give intellectual contribution to their society. May be by becoming a commitee member of research project. Its a fact that there is politics even at faculty level in Pakistan and some of the very competent lot of Pakistanis are just too skeptical of the political aspect of universities. They don’t want to get consumed in petty issues of department politics which is a fact in most Pakistani universities.
But again on the topic of publications, there is a lot of room for basic research in Pakistan for local problems. The task could be simpler by reproducing the case study results for Pakistani conditions. I think lot of people who have worked in the research knows that even in thousands of papers produced every year, only few qualify for ground breaking reseach.
Junaid Bhai,
Interesting post and I applaud ti for highlighting another weakness in our current Pakistan. From my knowledge some of these universities are producing top talent and they deserve to have at least a website of some stature that can project them to fellow Pakistanis and the world at large.
I hope that an ‘other’ Pakistan can come into being where we can project our good news from the rooftops as it were, ALLAH knows how we are always putting out bad news to the world. Please see Other Pakistan’s website and see how you can help build a better and more just Pakistan via link here http://www.otherpakistan.org/archive.html
Feimanallah
Wasim
how much of GDP we spend on our education….
how much of the intelligent people willing to serve thier country instead of running from Pakistan !!!
how much of doctors ..willing to serve in rural basic health centres instead of UK and USA …!!!
but i am not depressed….