ISLAMABAD: Once again no Pakistani university could make a place in the top 100 universities of Asia, according to the Times Higher Education Asia university rankings 2017.
The Times Higher Education World University Ranking is the agency to conduct the rankings for global universities. In calculating the top universities in Asia, the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2017 used the 13 performance indicators for the Asia university rankings purpose. In the rankings concluded on Thursday, the universities were judged across all of their core missions including teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.
According to the agency, it used 13 indicators for the The Asia University Rankings 2017, providing the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons, trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.
These performance indicators are grouped into five areas included Teaching (the learning environment), Research (volume, income and reputation), Citations (research influence), International outlook (staff, students and research), Industry income (knowledge transfer). According to the conducted rankings, Singapore is home to the continent’s best university for the second year in a row — the National University of Singapore while Japan is the most-represented nation in the list for the first time in three years, boasting 69 universities. As compare to its neighbourhood countries Pakistan could not get a place in the said ranking. China, Hong Kong and India have all made great gains in this year’s table.
India has doubled its representation, claiming 33 places in the list, up from 16 last year and while Hong Kong now has five institutions in the top 20, up from four. But some other nations are struggling. Taiwan does not have any institutions in the top 20 of the ranking for the first time in the five-year history of the table, and all of Thailand’s seven established universities have dropped places.
In the conducted ranking the agency, however, is hopeful that some countries are struggling for making themselves part of the global or Asia universities rankings list. This year’s table ranks 300 institutions, up from 200 last year. These universities come from 24 countries, including Sri Lanka, Kuwait, and the Philippines for the first time.
The agency said that the expansion of the table provides a glimpse of some of the lesser-known higher education hubs in the region and reveals the nations that are poised to become leading university countries in future years, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Although the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan is striving for getting a place in the global list of 500 universities, it has many loopholes in its system which according to the educationists, are the major cause for failure to gain a place in the international list. It is pertinent to mentioned here that in the previous year 2016, no Pakistani university was available in the list of top 500 world universities, according to the 2016-17 rankings list compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings.
According to QS world university rankings 2016-17, some 6 universities from Pakistan have marked their way amongst the top 800 universities from around the world with no improvement from the previous year.
According to the HEC, the Commission follows the QS world university ranking criteria. However, the QS Higher Education System Strength Rankings 2016, said that Pakistani higher education system had been ranked at the bottom with 9.2 score as compared to China 83.5, South Korea 80.1, Singapore 62.3, India 60.9, Chile 46.7, Saudi Arabia 36.7, Turkey 26.1, Kazakhstan 25.1, Lebanon 19.8, Ukraine 16.6, United Arab Emirates 10.9 scores. Surprisingly, Pakistan lags behind even a small country like Estonia.