ISLAMABAD: Due to the ranking mechanism of the flawed HEC, none of the Pakistani universities could secure a place in the global rankings for the last many years, according to experts. The HEC is applying mainly five indicators for conducting the rankings of its recognised varsities both of the public and the private sectors. These indicators are “Quality Assurance” with a share of 15 scores in the rankings, “Teaching Quality” with 30 scores, “Research” has 41 scores while “Finance and Facilities” have a share of 10 scores and four scores put for the “Social Integration or Community Development” which is the indicator of the rankings. The educationists are of the view that the HEC conducts research in a way in which more stress is laid on the components which are less important to other components — which have a crucial role in enhancing the overall educational standards. For example, they said, the teaching quality assurance is an integral indicator while it secures only 15 marks in the HEC rankings criteria or methodology. Same is the case with finance and facilities that has been specified only four scores/marks. The experts viewed that without economic sources no quality education could be pertained nor could a good research be conducted in any field. HEC Chairperson, Dr.Mukhtar Ahmed, told the scribe that the commission follows the QS World University Rankings’s methodology and criteria for the universities’ rankings. However, the QS World University Rankings criteria seems little different then the HEC of Pakistan. The QS World University Rankings indicators are Research, Teaching, Employability, Internationalisation, Facilities Online / Distance learning, Social Responsibility, Innovation, Arts and Culture, Inclusiveness and Specialist Criteria. When Daily Times tried to speak to renowned scholar Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy for his comments over the issue, he referred about his recent published article, in which he has stressed on financial resources both for conducting research as well as for making the universities rankings. He quoted a report which revealed the failure of the global university rankings. The report termed these rankings as dubious values. Dr. Hoodbhoy took Pakistan in that line adding that the country’s rankings ‘lose all meaning’. He claims that India’s academic situation is better than our country, adding that we (Pakistan) are the king of papers due to which the academic activity in the higher education sector has remained unchanged for the last 10 years. He also criticized the HEC’s inclusion of Thomson-Reuters data in the rankings and suggested that the HEC should review the teaching quality to get quality education and the most appropriate tools should be applied for this purpose (assessing the teaching quality). An educationist based in Islamabad said that while conducting the rankings of the university, the HEC itself involved in this process that is questionable because in the world, rankings conducted by any third party and the institution that is conducting research does not includes itself as a party. Rector IIUI Dr Masoom Yasinzai, said that to stand in global rankings is a time taking procedure. He quoted the example of Istanbul University that managed to come in international rankings. The university, Yasinzai said, has over 900 departments while on the other hand the largest in the country, the IIUI, did not have even 100 departments. Dr.Ahmed said that currently the HEC was focusing just on the quality of education and being a part of global rankings was not the primary goal of the commission. “Once quality education is achieved, the global rankings are achieved automatically,” he added. He maintained that although the HEC budget had increased significantly but it needed more money to chase the desired targets because the ‘global competition’ was very tough.