The Times Higher Education’s (THE) new World Universities Rankings (WUR) have been made public. A debate has revived around 11 Pakistani varsities being among the top 1,000 universities in the world. Over the past years in rankings by the same agency, some Pakistani varsities have slipped from top 500 to be listed among the top 1,000. No Pakistani university has made it to the top 500. In the world university rankings conducted by any agency, two parameters are most important and carry the most weight: research quality and the quality of the graduates produced. Let us look at both of these parameters in the Pakistani context.

The THE’s website claims that it ranks the universities based on many factors, including teaching excellence, research excellence in terms of citation impact, research reputation, income and productivity; international outlook and industry’s income. All these yardsticks make it important to follow the ranking of these and other universities across the globe. There is still a problem. The universities are ranked by international agencies like THE based on data received from the universities, without validating and verifying the data in most cases. In other words, these 11 universities applied for the rankings and provided data that a reliable third party has not authenticated.

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) ranks Pakistani universities’ Offices of Research Innovation and Commercialisation (ORICs) based on four broad parameters — Work Environment and Human Resource, Research Support, Capacity Building, and Commercialization of Research. It is interesting to note that in HEC’s last ORIC Scorecards Validation Report (https://hec.gov.pk/english/services/universities/ORICs/Pages/Downloads.aspx), a university that could not make it to the competing 69 universities in Pakistan, is ranked in the top 1,000 THE universities of the world. More universities ranked by the HEC in Categories Y and Z (“Below Average” and “Poor Performers”) have also made it to the world 1,000 top universities.

The recent rankings of universities have taken aback many as they do not match the ground realities in terms of the quality of education provided to the students in Pakistan, including higher education. An uneven equation has been observed between the service providers (universities) and recipients (students). The situation on the ground in Pakistan support the claim that the students’ performance has not improved, yet the university rankings have jumped. When a university improves its ranking in a developed country, the reflection is apparent in its graduates. In Pakistan, there appears to be is a disconnect. It appears to be a one-way street where the beneficiaries are only the top executives in terms of increasing their prospects for future recommendations to high seats at the cost of the students.

In the context of general education, there can be no better case study to judge the performance of our university graduates than seeing the results of the Central Superior Services (CSS) examination. The Federal Public Service Commission reports show that the passing percentage has been declining from 12 per cent to less than two in the last examination. Only 376 candidates out of 18,553 passed the written examination. This casts doubt on the competence of these graduates—but equally on the teaching excellence of the highly ranked universities. One wonders why these 11 top-ranked universities in Pakistan cannot produce at least 1,100 graduates who can qualify the CSS written examination. It is worth mentioning that four universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have made it to the world’s top 1,000 universities. Still, unfortunately, less than one per cent of their graduates passed the written part of the CSS examination.

The research scholars produced by these universities are no different than the other graduates. It is hard to see the reflection of research excellence in most students – despite the claimed competence of the teachers projected in the rankings. It is painful to write that the research culture in Pakistan has been greatly compromised. We do not see either the quality of research teaching or the quality of production in most Pakistani universities.

Recently, the HEC, in its 49th meeting of the International Research Support Initiative Programme (IRSIP) “showed severe reservations on the quality of research synopses, research attitude of [scholars]” and decided to write down to the vice-chancellors “to look into the quality of research, research topic and board of advance studies approval process” due to embarrassment it causes us globally.

However, one cannot give a clean chit to the HEC in this matter. They reduced the publication culture to a number game for personal promotions. This encouraged university teachers and their students to engage in dodgy practices to ensure more publications. On top of that, it helped many pseudo researchers to run ‘underground’ research journals, approved by the HEC, to establish a business model for fast-track publication. The story of other research journals, run by various institutes/ universities, and their tactics of publishing articles is another shame.

If we cannot do without publications, let’s have more publications. If we fail to achieve with the ‘taught’ model, let’s make it a ‘taught only’ model. The HEC has decided to further compromise on research culture by introducing MS (course-based) programme last year. The underlying notion is the poor quality of students entering universities, which has also prompted the HEC to launch an aptitude test for admissions BS programmes. Since we are here, why not have a standardised test like the international GRE mandatory for the teachers as well?

We should have the courage to admit that the ‘Taught’ model of research for pursuing a high academic degree has badly failed us in Pakistan. Instead of helping students, it has resulted in the disconnection of students’ learning and institutional efforts to empower students. The coursework has remained a mundane, tiring and fruitless process of educating students to have a firm footing in research. We thought that the GRE and the GAT could bring us good students for research, but we were proved wrong. We got many students who were not aware of the basic demands of the degree.

To establish a true research and academic culture, the universities need to break away from the ‘Taught’ model and return to the ‘classic’ model—practiced in the UK. Let’s abolish the fruitless coursework and replace it with some core foundation courses—mostly related to the methodology, research integrity and thesis writing. Let’s replace the GRE/ GAT tests with English, Urdu or regional language tests in which the candidates want to pursue the research. This will be a more meaningful exercise than asking students to study and be mentally prepared for five questions rather than introducing them to real research exercises.

The HEC should also abolish the number game with regard to publications for promotion of university faculty and replace it with a few quality publications together with other parameters of quality teaching. They can motivate the researchers/ faculty to publish books—from world-renowned publishers—than producing papers in the ‘underground’ journals. Initiatives should be taken to connect our research to the industry/ market rather than some shelves. Institutional research should guide the market and fulfill its needs. The government should link its major decisions to the research.

One cannot expect the international ranking agencies to verify and validate the data shared by the Pakistani institutions using independent sources, one can expect that Pakistani universities submit the same data annually to HEC where HEC, after validating the data, issues a ranking of the Pakistani universities. Otherwise, the exercise would remain a laughingstock, the way it is.

The writer has a PhD in journalism studies from the University of Sheffield, UK. He currently teaches at the University of Peshawar. He tweets @AmirHamzaBangas