PESHAWAR: Having its name at the top of all Pakistani universities in recent international rankings of universities released by Times Higher Education must be a matter of honour and pride for all those affiliated with the Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan (AWKUM) in any capacity.
None of the Pakistani universities could find a place among the top 500 universities of the world. AWKUM stood at number 510 among the international universities. Thus it clinched top position among the Pakistani universities. It is followed by the Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad. AWKUM is among the new universities of the country. The project was approved in 2007 and it started formal functioning as a university in 2009. The university is 13 years old and within such a short span of time it managed to outrank many big and old universities in the country.
The rankings are conducted at national and international levels. At national level Higher Education Commission conducts ranking of the universities in the country. At international level two reputed organizations – Time Higher Education World University Rankings and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), popularly known as QS universities ranking. The indicators for the ranking at national and international levels do not remain the same. The national ranking is undertaken by the HEC, but it has been unable to release such rankings for the past two years. The key indicators for the current international ranking were teaching, research, citation, industry income and international outlook. The key statistics of AWKUM as per the report released by Times Higher Education - the teacher-student ratio is 1-22.7, number of foreign students is just one percent, male and female student ratio is 29-71 and the total enrollment in the university is 9,664.
AWKUM got 13.1 points for teaching, 9.2 for research, 85.5 for citation, 33.4 for industry income and 45.8 for international outlook. These points enabled the university to get leading position in the country and find space close to the top 500 universities in the world.
It is really a proud moment for a new university located in an underdeveloped region to compete with world class universities. The credit for the excellent performance no doubt goes to the founders of the institutions, who not only established a new institution in a hitherto neglected district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but brought it on a par with world class institutions within 10 years.
The founding vice-chancellor of the university Dr Ihsan Ali led the way as it made strides in academics and teaching standards. Dr Ihsan Ali joined the university as project director on July 3, 2007 and set up the institution in a corner of Government Post Graduate College Mardan.
