THE HEC has announced the ranking of public and private sector universities, categorising them into four discipline-based and three enrolment-based groups.

Lahore University of Management Sciences and NUST are the most highly ranked. The sampling mechanism chosen is both qualitative and quantitative. In the world universities are ranked for their qualitative performance only.

Also, most universities were given charter after 2002 and, thus, they cannot compete with the PU and QAU on the basis of enrolment criterion.

These universities are still facing serious financial issues due to which they are not able to build new campuses etc.

The HEC ranking system is good, but it needs improvement in a way that in the future a 100-year-old university is not compared with a newly-built one.

HASSAM WAHEEDLahore