Pakistan’s higher education landscape has been dealt a sobering blow as the latest QS World University Rankings reveal that no university from the country has made it into the top 350 globally. The annual rankings, released by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), highlight the widening gap between Pakistan’s academic institutions and their global counterparts.
Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) and the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) were the highest-ranked from Pakistan, placed at 354th and 371st positions respectively. Despite this, their placement still falls short of the world’s leading academic benchmarks. The University of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest university by student population, failed to break into the top 1,000 and barely secured a position among the top 1,500 institutions worldwide. No other university from Sindh appeared in the top 1,500 rankings.
Several other Pakistani institutions did feature in the rankings, though mostly in lower tiers. Punjab University was placed at 542, while the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) followed at 555. The University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, ranked 654, and COMSATS University Islamabad appeared at 664. PIEAS, a prominent science and engineering institution, stood at 721, while UET Lahore was listed at 801. The University of Peshawar was placed at 901, and both Lahore University and Aga Khan University were listed in the 951 and 1001 bands, respectively.
Internationally, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) maintained its dominant position at the top, followed closely by Imperial College London and Stanford University. The contrast with Pakistan’s performance has triggered renewed concern among education experts and policymakers.
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The absence of any Pakistani university in the upper tiers of the rankings highlights deep-rooted structural issues in the country’s higher education system, including underfunding, limited research output, and insufficient global engagement. Analysts warn that without meaningful investment and urgent reforms, Pakistan risks being left behind in an increasingly knowledge-driven global economy.