Global university ranking experts QS have released their latest QS World University Rankings by Subject 2019, with only three Pakistani universities in top 500 for engineering and technology discipline.

The QS rankings are one of the most established and well respected rankings of universities around the world and are key reference for students around the world to gauge how various universities perform and compare in the global higher education scene.

For this year’s subject rankings, QS studied universities around the world across 48 disciplines, including engineering and technology, arts and humanities, life sciences and medicine, and social sciences. To arrive at the final raking, QS studies each universities studied academic reputation, employer reputation, research citations per paper and H-index (productivity and impact of published work of a scientist or scholar)

Per this year’s results, the top university in the world to study engineering and technology is Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while Stanford University was placed number two on the list.

MIT ached an overall score of 97.6, while it received a score of 99 for academic reputation and 94.6 for employer reputation. Stanford on the other hand scored 94.2 overall, but outdid MIT for H-index citations and citations per paper, scoring 100 points in each category.

Both MIT and Stanford retained their positions from 2018, but there was change of guard at the third spot. This year, the third position went to ETH Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which pushed last year’s number three, University of Cambridge, down to the fourth position.

Pakistani Varsities

Like the previous year’s ranking, Pakistani engineering universities were found much further down the list, and only three of them in total. It must be noted, rather worryingly, that the number of Pakistani universities in the ranking actually shrunk from five in 2018 to just three this year.

Last year, Pakistan had National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) Islamabad, and University of Engineering & Technology (UET) Lahore in the ranking. However, LUMS and QAU failed to be included in the QS ranking this year.

The saving grace for Pakistan, like in the previous year, was NUST. The university was placed 321st in the 500-strong list. However, it was way below the number 279 which NUST was placed on in the 2018 ranking.

The next best for Pakistan was COMSATS at number 365. COMSATS improved its ranking significantly this year, moving to the 365th spot from the 401-450 band it was placed in in 2018.

The last Pakistani engineering university included in 2019 QS ranking was UET Lahore, which was placed in the 451-500 band. UET’s ranking remained unchanged in 2019.

On the other hand, India had 10 engineering universities in the list, with the highest rank achieved by Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) named 53rd best university in the world for engineering for 2019. IITB improved its ranking considerably this year, moving up 11 places to 53rd from previous year’s 64th.