The Government College University (GCU) Lahore this year improved its international ranking; standing sixth among the top nine universities of Pakistan that have made it to the Times Higher Education World Universities Ranking 2019. Last year, 10 Pakistani universities made it to this coveted list and GCU Lahore was standing at the ninth position. According to the official announcement by the Times Higher Education on Thursday, this year, only nine universities of Pakistan made it to the World Universities Ranking 2018-2019 which include Comsats Institute of Information Technology, University of Agriculture, National University of Sciences & Technology, Bahauddin Zakariya University, University of Engineering & Technology, GCU, University of Lahore, Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University and University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences. The universities were judged upon the pillars of teaching, research, citations, industry income and international outlook – to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons. According to the Times Higher Education, GCU’s strongest pillar was international outlook while its weakest pillar was citations. However, GCU stood overall 1001+ among all universities of the world and 351+ in Asia. Talking to media, GCU Quality Enhancement Cell Director Iram Sohail said that last year, GCU was at ninth position among the top 10 universities of Pakistan that made it to the coveted list. “However, this year GCU has improved its ranking and secured the sixth position among Pakistani universities which was a great achievement,” she added. She also said that they were pleased to see international visibility of GCU which was another landmark under the leadership of its vice chancellor. Iram Sohail said that GCU’s ranking was improved due to an increase in the university’s industrial income and research output. “Our industrial income was zero a couple of years back which has now increased to an aggregate of about Rs 80,000 per academic staff member which is a milestone achievement,” she concluded. GCU Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Hassan Amir Shah expressed immense pleasure on improvement in the university’s ranking, saying that these rankings were important because besides giving international recognition, they also helped universities understand their weak and strong areas. GCU VC Professor Dr Hassan Amir Shah hoped that GCU’s ranking would further improve next year. He called upon the government to provide funding to GCU, saying that “their biggest challenge is to improve quality and ranking while remaining affordable to the students”. Published in Daily Times, September 28th 2018.