‘No Pakistani varsity in top 500 universities of the world’

Quality and standard of universities in the country questioned

KARACHI: There is no Pakistani university in the top 500 universities of the world because our varsities cannot compete in credible ranking systems such as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, QS World University Ranking or Shanghai Ranking, said Sindh Madressatul Islam University vice-chancellor Dr Muhammad Ali Shaikh.



He said this while speaking at a session titled ‘Qualitative Higher Education and Our Universities’ on the second day of the Sindh Literature Festival held at Beach Luxury Hotel on Saturday. Criticising the quality and standard of universities in Pakistan, he said that universities are autonomous bodies in developed countries, however, in our country the controllers of examinations are appointed by the government.



Dr Shaikh believes that substandard and irrelevant research is the reason for such poor rankings of Pakistani universities. He said we need to change the direction of our research and improve the research culture.

He was of the opinion that varsities in Pakistan and Sindh in particular have become teaching centres, rather than research institutes. While quoting a research, Dr Shaikh said that our matriculation students have equal language and mathematic skills as compared to students of class two in developed countries. Unfortunately parents’ dreams their children are shattered due to the low quality of education in Pakistan, he said.



Dr Shaikh suggested that scholars should be the heads of universities, so that they can promote scholarly activities in the varsities and keep a check on corruption and nepotism in the universities. The higher education policy is being made by a bureaucracy which has no background or expertise in the field of education, he maintained. The vice-chancellor added that, unfortunately, we are short-sighted people who protest only if we face load-shedding but do not protest if a neighbourhood school is becoming a ghost school.





According to him, he is not in favour of university campuses that operate in multiple cities. Giving an example of Oxford University, he said that it does not have campuses anywhere else in the world or even in the United Kingdom. University encourages intellectual interaction and varsities must internalise students and faculty from different areas, rather than encouraging students to move from their cities, Dr Shaikh added. “Universities are an extended shadow of their heads,” he said, adding that progress depends on the vice-chancellor of the university. He said that the alumni must pay back their universities, like the students do in developed countries.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2016.