ISLAMABAD – Pakistani educational institutions are notorious for their low international rankings, but a Pakistani university has finally found a place in the top 100 Asian universities.
According to Global Education rankings for 2017, Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU), Islamabad, is ranked at 95 in the list of top Asian universities. QAU is the only Pakistani university that has been included in top 100 educational institutions.
Globally, the university ranks 539 with a score of 49.1, having slipped from 496th place last year. Agha Khan University sits at the 826th spot with a score of 39.6.
For regional rankings, China, Japan, Korea and Singapore continue to dominate the rankings.
University of Tokyo, National University of Singapore and Peking University were the top three Asian universities.
The touchstone for ranking multiple universities included twelve factors: global and regional research reputation, publications, books, conferences, normalized citation impact, total citations, number of publications which are among 10 percent most cited, percentage of total publications that are among the 10 percent most cited, international collaboration, number of highly cited papers that are among the top one percent most cited in their respective field, percentage of total publications that are among the top one percent most highly cited papers.
QAU academics and officials maintained that the varsity had achieved this distinction despite being financially strapped and suffering from a persistent budget deficit in the range of Rs500-600 million rupees for several years. Officials added that its PC-1 and development funding by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and government of Pakistan have also been stalled.
