HEC abandons process of ranking universities

Commission lacks capacity to hold transparent, non-controversial ranking, say officials

ISLAMABAD: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has abandoned the exercise of ranking universities due to lack of accurate data, professional capacity and incompatibility of the existing method ‘with ground realities’.

So far the HEC has conducted rankings of the countries thrice – in 2013, 2015 and 2016 – but every time it was harshly criticised for ‘promoting one university at the cost of another’ and having ‘flawed data’ for the process.

In the past few years, the news about ranking of Pakistani universities at international level has also been not encouraging, putting the HEC on the back foot at national and parliamentary forums.

According to sources in the HEC, it has now decided to shun the plans for holding another ranking process.

HEC officials privy to the development say the problems range from lack of capacity to hold transparent and non-controversial ranking, as well as the lack of expertise in collecting and analysing the data.



“The senior official who was dealing with the ranking process was transferred last year to Quetta regional centre for poorly handling certain affairs of his section including the data,” an official, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Express Tribune.

Ahmed Yahya Khan, the HEC’s Statistics Division director general, was also snubbed in several meetings and was later transferred for his alleged poor data management and not being ‘steadfast’ in his affairs.

Interestingly, in a meeting last year, HEC Executive Director Arshad Ali had castigated Khan for sharing figures of 2015-16 for universities’ ranking in 2018.

Earlier ranking conducted in 2013 was based on data of 2010, the second ranking of 2015 was based on figures of 2012-13 and the last one, in 2016, was based on the statistics of 2014-15.

After getting to know that the data collected was old, the executive director ordered dropping the idea of ranking on such statistics. Since last year, the executive director is also embroiled in allegations of plagiarism.

Another Herculean task the HEC is facing relates to tailor-made figures from universities to meet the required number of research papers, PhDs and students. “They submit research papers in dozens while sharing the figures required to meet the criteria for PhDs,” said another senior official.



The HEC has been working on software to get first-hand information from universities regarding enrollment of students, faculty etc. However, it has been struggling to convince universities to share the real-time data, besides facing technical glitches.

Currently, the HEC has no proper system of having latest and transparent statistics from universities due to apparent lack of authority over universities and intransigence of institutions in sharing the fresh data.

Mistrust of varsities

Every ranking has created fissures between the HEC and universities, with the latter blaming the former for having ‘flawed data’ and relying on indicators ‘too basic’.

The University of South Asia took the HEC to court for its ranking of 2016 while the Lahore School of Economics also expressed its reservations along with others. Another concern was smaller universities with qualitative outputs could not compete with universities older in age.

Executive Director Ali told The Express Tribune that ranking had becoming an international business and it was not actually reflective of the universities performance or position. He said Europe had no such concept of ranking.



“It’s even better not to have ranking,” he said, adding that comparing weaker universities with stronger ones was not the right way. Ranking should highlight strength of universities and not weaknesses with current set of indicators, he said.

“We have not abandoned the ranking process but are looking to have a picture that is actual reflection of the higher education institutions,” he added.

Outgoing HEC chairperson Dr Mukhtar Ahmed also admitted ranking was a different and dangerous task. “I do not consider ranking the real indicator. Indicators need to be improved and work is under way,” he added.