The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) requires public and private sector universities to establish secretariats to apply its quality assurance mechanisms and conduct institutional self-evaluation processes. The outcome of these exercises is a scorecard. In other words, the exercise becomes an “exam” that a university conducts for itself, and the “score” achieved becomes a reflection of the institution. Relatedly, the HEC also ranks Pakistan’s universities on a uniform criterion. In the following space, I will question some of the indicators used in both these processes to ask if they provide a transparent window into the teaching and research work being done at our institutions. The first area of concern is the use of some dispensable indicators in the institutional self-evaluation process. One such indicator is the provision for office space and staff members in quality enhancement cells at universities. Having such an office is surely important, and has resulted in the introduction of many internationally-used quality assessment regimes at our universities. But taking a bird’s eye view of the arrangement, we will see that merely having a secretariat does not translate into the production of cutting edge research or improvement in teaching work. Why then, have points for office space and staff on the scorecard? Moreover, within the remit given to these offices, there is, at present, pronounced emphasis on the generation of paperwork, betraying a growing appetite for statistics, tables and graphs. There are also points for organising and attending workshops and training exercises. While these are surely necessary, crafty operators can tailor their institutional output to the assessment metrics and fudge figures for evaluation. When this happens, the institution’s performance goes up on the scorecard but does not reflect actual improvement in quality. If “actual” is a vague term here, let us simply ask ourselves how many international field recognition awards faculty members and scholars at our universities have won in the past five to ten years. The exercise becomes an ‘exam’ that a university conducts for itself, and the ‘score’ achieved becomes a reflection of the institution. The next related issue is the HEC’s ranking of Pakistani universities. Rankings, or “league tables”, as they are called in Western academia, are benchmarking tools that have gained global salience since the late 1990s. International league tables reflect a university’s reputation, influence government allocations, and indicate comparative academic performance. In Global South or Developing Nations such as ours, moving up a notch in these rankings, such as the Times Higher Education University Rankings, or the QS World University Rankings, is seen to indicate achievement and improvement. But so far, we have struggled to move up this tricky ladder. One major reason is the indicators employed by these league tables. The Shanghai Ranking Consultancy (2013), for instance, lists the following heads in its calculation of a university’s performance: alumni who have won the Nobel prize or comparable highest achievement field awards; a number of current staff winning Nobel prizes and comparable achievement awards; several highly cited research articles; and academic performance with respect to student enrolment. It is obvious, unfortunately, that no Pakistani university would score much on these counts. The QS Ranking includes in its criterion, indicators like the university’s reputation among international academics and employers, and its ability to attract international staff and students. That explains partly why there is no Pakistani institution in the QS’s top tier. Quite rightly then, the HEC has its own criterion to rank local institutions. However, both the university self-evaluations mentioned earlier and HEC rankings assume a common frame of reference for all public sector institutes, even if they vary considerably in their founding logic, outlook, objectives and resources. In Lahore alone, there are women-only institutes, such as the Kinnaird and Lahore colleges (both universities now) and missionary establishments like FC College (also a university). Government College Lahore (GC) was established following the War of Independence (1857) as an institute for liberal education. The foundation of the Punjab University was to follow in 1882. The Oriental College Lahore predates the Punjab University and has focused on Oriental learning in the vernaculars. The National College of Arts (NCA) was founded to preserve Indian arts and crafts from extinction in the face of British imports. Gradually, the aim was altered to teach the arts and crafts geared towards their application to manufacturing. The NCA became an autonomous institution in 1985, and its ambit has widened considerably ever since. Even in the limited selection above, we will find that the institutions mentioned cater to different demographics and exhibit ample divergence in terms of founding principles, aims and objectives. For example, the Punjab University was an examining body, a teaching institute, and offered affiliation to colleges from the start, whereas GC Lahore and Lahore College for Women (LCW) only became universities in the early 2000s. Needless to say, there is a marked difference in the financial and infrastructural resources available to these institutes. Let us also not forget, many of Pakistan’s current public sector institutes were upgraded from college to university status in haste under military dictatorship. So, as we ask public sector universities to evaluate themselves and rank them against uniform rubrics, shouldn’t we simultaneously pay attention to the specific history, orientation and challenges of these institutions? Might we wager that a closer look at their peculiarities will lead to some revision or qualification in the indicators we use in the self-evaluation and ranking exercises? There is a need for some honest deep thinking on the entire spectrum of higher education in the country, and how it relates to and compares with the performance of universities in the Muslim Orient and the West. Institutional self-evaluation and university rankings are important exercises, but the indicators used need to be carefully selected to transparently reflect teaching and research quality at our institutes. The writer is the current Vice-Chancellor of GC University, Lahore and can be reached at vc@gcu.edu.pk