First the bad news: four Pakistani universities have gone down in global ranking of 800 institutions of higher learning. And now the good news: four Pakistani universities are still among the top 800 across the globe. Come to think of it, this is not just good news; this is an amazing piece of information almost bordering on the unbelievable.

The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings is one of the most authentic lists in the field of higher education across six parameters. To be even considered for a ranking takes some doing. Simply put, the four universities deserve a pat on the back instead of a kick down where it hurts, which is often their fate.

The United Kingdom-based agency recently released its ranking for the current year according to which the four Pakistani universities have fared worse than what they had achieved in 2012.

The Islamabad-based National University of Science and Technology (NUST), which recently topped the local Higher Education Commission (HEC) ranking, dropped to the 481-490 bracket, from the 400-451 bracket it had made in the preceding year. To its credit, NUST is the only Pakistani university to have continuously maintained a presence in the top 500 world universities or the last seven years since 2007.

The Lahore-based University of Engineering and Technology (UET), the University of Karachi and the University of Lahore have all been placed in the 701+ group; down from the 601+ grouping they had last year.

The list includes surveys regarding reputation related to academics and graduate employers, drawing on over 90,000 responses worldwide, which is the largest such exercise in the world. This year, 62,094 academic and 27,957 employer responses contributed to the results.

The rankings are based on four key pillars, research, teaching, employability and internationalisation, and the methodology consists of six indicators: academic reputation (40 per cent), employer reputation (10pc), faculty-to-student ratio (20pc), citations per faculty (20pc), international students (5pc) and international faculty (5pc).

The largest chunk, as one can see, relates to academic reputation that carries 40pc weightage in the ranking, and it is something that goes hand-in-hand with the reputation that a country carries at large. And do we need to talk about what kind of reputation Pakistan as a country and Pakistanis as a people carry? It just does not merit a comment.

The other two markers that go with it are the number of international students and international faculty, together accounting for 10pc. In a phase — the rather prolonged and irritating phase that it is — where most Pakistanis want to move out, it is almost impossible to imagine students and teachers coming here. Indeed, there are several students from countries that are facing situations much worse than us — Somalia, Sudan and so on — but they don’t add up to much. Forget the faculty altogether and, that being so, yet another marker goes down the drain: the employer reputation.

So, 60pc of the markers are directly or indirectly related to the law and order situation that the country has been facing for the last more than a decade. While we can continue to argue over whether or not it is our war that we are waging, but it is certainly affecting the society in ways more than one. Suggesting the right way forward is beyond the scope of these lines (and indeed beyond my political acumen!) but in any global ranking — educational or otherwise — the country is bound to suffer.

The only two markers left, as such, are the student-to-faculty ratio and the citation per faculty, which together account for 40pc of the overall weightage. As noted by a QS official who made the presentation locally, the challenge for Pakistani universities today is to “improve student-to-faculty ratio and to start producing more highly-cited research”.

The HEC-led focus on research has definitely increased the number of thesis generated in the country and the number of doctorate degrees awarded against them, the quality of these research papers and, perhaps more importantly, the relevance of the chosen topics with the modern advancements in life is something that is far from any degree of satisfaction.

It is only understandable that the research does not generate citation of Pakistani research papers elsewhere in the world. The myopic focus on volume has certainly come at the cost of quality. The research is good enough for the award of a degree — and its subsequent linkages like employment, promotion and PhD allowances — but not for academic purposes. This is something that needs the attention of policymakers as soon as they get some time out of their hectic schedule of antics.

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