A university is supposed to be a place where questions challenge established beliefs, discoveries transform industries, and research offers solutions to society’s most difficult problems. It is where a country prepares not merely its graduates but also its future scientists, inventors, policymakers and thinkers.
In Pakistan, however, a troubling question has been hanging over the higher education sector for years: how has a country that has expanded its university network and produced thousands of PhD holders struggled to establish its institutions among the world’s leading centres of learning and research?
The latest international rankings have once again brought this uncomfortable reality into focus. Pakistan has universities appearing in global league tables, but none has entered the top 350 in the latest QS World University Rankings. Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU), the country’s highest-ranked institution, secured 381st place in the QS 2027 rankings, while the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) followed among the country’s leading institutions. The previous QS edition had placed QAU at 354th. The decline underlines how difficult it has been to sustain progress even among the country’s strongest institutions.
The picture is even less encouraging in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2027. According to rankings published on September 30, QAU was placed in the 551–600 band, NUST in the 601–650 band, and COMSATS University Islamabad in the 651–700 band. Fifty-six Pakistani universities featured in the ranking, but none made the global top 400.
Rankings are not the ultimate measure of a university’s worth. Their methodologies differ, and institutions can perform differently across subjects and indicators. Nevertheless, when a country’s leading universities remain far behind their international counterparts, the results raise serious questions about research quality, institutional governance, academic standards and the resources available to scholars.
The problem is not that Pakistan lacks talented students or capable academics. Rather, it is that the country has yet to build a higher education system capable of consistently turning individual talent into internationally competitive scholarship and innovations that improve people’s lives.
The Higher Education Commission (HEC), established in 2002 to oversee and strengthen higher education, has supported scholarships, faculty development, research programmes and the expansion of academic institutions. Yet, more than two decades later, the challenge is to demonstrate that these initiatives have translated into lasting improvements in teaching, research quality and institutional performance.
In February 2026, academic and researcher Dr Noman Ahmed, writing in a national daily, argued that the commission needed to reassess how research grants were distributed and whether the funded projects delivered meaningful results. He also raised concerns about research priorities that were disconnected from Pakistan’s needs and the restrictions on intellectual freedom within universities. His analysis points towards a fundamental weakness: research funding cannot be judged merely by the amount spent or the number of projects completed; it must also be evaluated by what those projects discover and contribute.
The HEC’s own leadership has acknowledged that the sector faces substantial institutional challenges. In October 2024, its then chairman, Dr Mukhtar Ahmed, identified governance and quality assurance as key problems confronting higher education. “More we focus on improving governance mechanisms of our higher learning institutions, more will it enhance the quality of education and research and also resolve the financial challenges that many universities are grappling with,” he said.
That assessment raises a larger question about accountability. If governance and quality assurance are recognised as major weaknesses, what mechanisms ensure that universities correct them? How are vice-chancellors evaluated? Are research grants monitored for scientific and social impact? And what consequences follow when institutions fail to meet academic standards?
These questions matter because expanding access to higher education without protecting quality can produce impressive statistics but disappointing outcomes. A growing number of campuses, programmes and postgraduate qualifications does not automatically create a stronger research culture.
A study published in the journal ‘Societal Impacts’ in 2026, titled ‘Research culture in Pakistan’s Higher Education Institutions (HEIs): Examining the consequences of publication driven policies’, examined faculty perceptions through interviews and a survey involving 102 academics. Its findings suggested that an excessive emphasis on publication quantity in academic evaluation could contribute to faculty dissatisfaction and unethical practices. The authors called for a broader approach to evaluating research and building a healthier academic culture.
The implications are serious. When academics are rewarded primarily for producing papers, research risks becoming an exercise in meeting career requirements rather than answering important questions. The system may generate publications without producing comparable advances in scientific understanding, public policy, technology or industry.
This does not mean that Pakistani researchers produce no valuable work. Indeed, the country has examples that challenge any sweeping dismissal of its academic potential. QAU’s performance in the citations-per-faculty indicator is one such example. In the QS 2026 rankings, the university was reported to have secured 51st place globally in that category, demonstrating that research originating in Pakistan can attract substantial international attention.
Financial constraints are another part of the problem. Meaningful research requires laboratories, specialised equipment, reliable electricity and internet access, current journals, trained technical staff, research grants and sufficient time for academics to conduct investigations. These are not optional extras; they are the foundations of serious scholarship.
Pakistan also needs to reconsider the relationship between universities and the wider economy. Too much academic work risks remaining confined to theses, journal articles and conference presentations, with limited engagement with the problems confronting agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare, energy, climate resilience and public administration.
There are encouraging signs that some institutions are attempting to bridge this gap. In February 2026, the University of the Punjab began implementing a research, innovation and commercialisation policy that allows faculty members to establish spin-off companies based on university-developed technologies. The policy also provides for researchers to receive between 50 and 80 per cent of royalty income generated by their products.
The HEC has also begun work on a proposed National Research Excellence Framework in collaboration with the British Council. Discussions launched in January 2026 are intended to strengthen research evaluation, benchmarking and performance assessment, with a view to linking funding and institutional support more closely to research quality, integrity and impact.
Reform must extend beyond the HEC. University administrations need greater accountability, merit-based appointments, transparent financial management and protection for independent academic inquiry. Faculty members need opportunities to collaborate internationally, access modern facilities and devote adequate time to research. Students need better supervision, stronger research training and a system that values critical thinking over rote learning.
The government, meanwhile, must treat higher education as a long-term investment rather than a recurring expenditure to be managed through short-term fixes. Funding matters, but money alone will not repair a system undermined by weak governance, misdirected incentives and inadequate accountability.
Pakistan’s universities do not need to chase rankings blindly. They need to build the underlying strengths that make strong rankings possible: rigorous teaching, credible research, academic freedom, international collaboration and a demonstrable contribution to society.
Pakistan has spent decades expanding its higher education system. The next phase must be about ensuring that this expansion produces excellence rather than merely more institutions and qualifications.
Until that shift occurs, the distance between Pakistan’s universities and the world’s leading centres of knowledge will remain a measure not of the country’s shortage of talent, but of its failure to create the conditions in which that talent can flourish.