Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Times Higher Education (THE), UK which is the World leading universities rankings agency, met the Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mahmood on Thursday to present the latest rankings of Pakistani universities.
THE team was represented by the Chief Knowledge Officer Phil Baty and Dr. Liz Shepard who is the Chief Data Scientist at THE.
Phil Baty congratulated the Minister for brilliant performance of Pakistani Universities in the World Universities Rankings 2022. The meeting was also attended by senior officials of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education Commission.
For 2022 THE Rankings, the Times Higher Education team analyzed 108 million citations and 4.4 million research publications. In addition, around 430,000 data points from 2144 participating institutions were also analyzed. Times Higher Education conducts an annual academic and research repute survey and its results are also used for rankings. For 2021 survey there were 140,000 reputation survey votes from 22,000 respondents from around the globe.
Based on this analysis only 1,662 institutions from 99 countries were allowed to compete for the Times World Universities Rankings. Achieving a ranking position in the THE World University Rankings is a great achievement for an institution.
To appear in these rankings, HEI(s) must be one of the world’s leading research university meeting strict criteria against 13 indicators. Pakistani universities have made major strides in the field of research and teaching over last three years and this is reflected through THE latest universities’ rankings.
As per THE analysis, Pakistan is one of the world’s fastest improving nations on a range of key metrics and is one of the top five of nations globally for improvements in research citations, international outlook and industry links.
Times analysis also shows that this is not a one time achievement for Pakistani HEI(s) but this upwards trend in noticeable over last three years performance.
Twenty one Pakistani universities make the 2022 edition of the World University Rankings, including five newly ranked this year. The total number of ranked universities has risen to 21 from just two in 2016 (the oldest ranking under the same methodology).
Eleven Pakistani universities make it into the elite world top 1,000 list in 2022, up from eight last year and just two in 2016.
Quaid-i-Azam University, leading public sector university, is ranked first among the Pakistani HEIs with an international rank between (501-600) for a second consecutive year.
In addition, five Pakistani universities appear for the first time, in the world’s top 800 list. An analysis of the seven universities that have appeared in all of the last five annual editions of the rankings from 2018 to 2022 reveals very positive trends. These HEIs have improved their scoring twice more than the rest of the world. There has been significant improvements in research and academic reputation.
