ISLAMABAD, April 11: Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) Islamabad has been ranked 69th best university of the world.

According to “QS World University Rankings 2011” issued by topuniversities.com website on Monday, the world's leading 10 universities and institutes were still in the US and UK. They included Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of California (Berkeley) and University of California (Los Angeles) in the US; and Oxford, Cambridge universities and Imperial College of London in the UK.

Talking to this reporter, Vice Chancellor QAU Prof Masoom Yasin Zai attributed the achievement to strategic planning at the university envisioned some two years back. Besides, he said, the university had introduced new programmes and hired around 35 PhDs who had returned from the West. He said seven international faculty members were also teaching at the QAU.

“Today QAU is rated along with MIT and Harvard University mainly because of professionalism and modernisation introduced at all levels - modern labs, international subjects, research papers etc.”

The VC said the number of the university's international research publications was also increasing because of high standard of education being provided by the faculty and hard work of the students.

He added: “If you want to have more Pakistani universities among the world's best, all you have to do is to follow a strict higher education policy for the next three decades.”