Seven Pakistani varsities in world’s top 1,000 list

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Seven Pakistani universities were present on the 1,000 list of top universities of the world released by UK-based rating agency Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) on Tuesday.

Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS) emerged as top-ranked university of Pakistan on QS list for 2020.

The UK-based agency placed PIEAS at 375 on world ranking of 1,000 universities for its student faculty ratio, very high research output, besides other merit points.

PIEAS was followed by National University of Science and Technology, which stood at 400 for its very high research output number of students and faculty. Quaid-e-Azam University was ranked 511 on criteria of 77.4 citations per faculty, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) 701 for its employer reputation, while COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Lahore and University of Punjab were ranked 801 on global list of 1,000 top universities.

LUMS was the only private sector university of Pakistan to make the list.

Meanwhile, NUST in a statement issued on Tuesday said it has ascended 128 positions in the world ranking during the last three years, and 17 positions since last year, which is indeed a meritorious accomplishment.

QS ranks universities both at world and regional level, besides other ranking categories, such as subject rankings and young universities rankings.

The QS university rankings are carried out on the basis of teaching and research quality, academic, employer reputation, citations per paper, papers per faculty and internationalisation measures taken by the university. NUST’s improved scores in academic reputation, citations per faculty, faculty and student ratio, and international students have helped further consolidate its position this year.

Last year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first university ever to be ranked best in the world for seven consecutive years, according to www.topuniversities.com analysis on QS ranking. MIT biggest challengers in recent years have been fellow American institutions Stanford University and Harvard University. For either of these universities to get closer to MIT, their biggest area for improvement would be to improve the ratio of international students enrolled, the analysis said.

Chinese universities are in ascendancy, buoyed by heavy investment in research. This is typically reflected in our rankings by the indicator measuring citations per faculty. 

Published in The Express Tribune, June 19^th, 2019.