Universities Rank among Asia's Top 500
By Riaz Haq CA
British ranking agency Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has ranked 23 Pakistani universities among the top 500 Asian universities for 2019, up from 16 in 2018. Other South Asian universities figuring in the QS top universities
report are 75 from India, 6 from Bangladesh and 4 from Sri Lanka.
South Asia Ranking
In terms of the number of universities ranking in Asia's
top 500, Pakistan with its 23 universities ranks second in
South Asia and 7th among 17 Asian nations topped by
China with 112, Japan 89, India 75, South Korea 57,
Taiwan 36, Malaysia 26, Pakistan 23, Indonesia 22,
Thailand 19, Philippines 8, Hong Kong 7, Vietnam 7,
Bangladesh 6, Sri Lanka 4, Singapore 3, Macao 2, and
Brunei 2.
National University of Singapore ranked number one in
Asia followed by University of Hong Kong and Nanyang
Technological University in Singapore. Tsinghua
University and Peking University—both from China—
round off the top five list in Asia.
Pakistan's Top Universities National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) is the top ranked university in Pakistan in QS Asia University Rankings 2019. NUST has moved up from
91st to 87th position. The second ranked university in Pakistan is Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) at 95th position in the Asian ranking. These are the only two Pakistani universities ranked among the top 100 in the QS Asia University Rankings 2019. In contrast, India has 8 universities ranked among Asia's top 100. My alma mater NED University of Engineering and Technology is ranked 15th among Pakistan's 23 universities included in Asia's top 500 for 2019. Pakistan has emerged as the country with the highest percentage of Highly Cited Papers compared with the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in the last 10 years, according to Thomson Reuters. Pakistan has done so despite the fact that its "R&D environment has faced substantial economic challenges".
Pakistani Researchers Citations
In a report titled "Pakistan: Another BRIC in the Wall", author Lulian Herciu says that Pakistan’s scientific productivity has quadrupled, from approximately 2,000 articles per year in 2006 to more than 9,000 articles in 2015. During this time, the number of Highly Cited
Papers featuring Pakistan-based authors rose tenfold, from 9 articles in 2006 to 98 in 2015.
The author asserts that his report provides comparisons
between Pakistan and BRIC nations taking a look at
productivity and leveraging contextual indicators. His
analysis points to the fact that Pakistan can be
benchmarked with emerging and dynamic countries such
as those in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China)
group.
The Thomson Reuters report has found that in 2012
"Pakistan's normalized Citation Impact was higher than
that of all of the BRIC nations".
CERN Membership
In 2014, Pakistan became the first Asian country and the
third in the world after Turkey and Serbia to be honored
with CERN's associate membership. Gaining associate
member status is a step before the grant of full
membership. As an associate member, Pakistan is entitled
to attend open and restricted sessions of the organization.
College and University Enrollment
There are over 3 million students enrolled in grades 13
through 16 in Pakistan's 1,086 degree colleges and 161 universities, according to a Pakistan Higher Education Commission report for 2013-14. The 3 million enrollment is 15% of the 20 million Pakistanis in the eligible age group of 18-24 years. In addition, there are over 255,000 Pakistanis enrolled in vocational training schools, according to Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (TEVTA).
Pakistani universities have been producing over half a million graduates, including over 10,000 IT graduates, every year since 2010, according to HEC data. The number of university graduates in Pakistan increased from 380,773 in 2005-6 to 493,993 in 2008-09. This figure is growing with rising enrollment and contributing to Pakistan's growing human capital.
Higher education in Pakistan has come a long way since the country’s independence in 1947 when there was only one university, the University of Punjab. By 1997, the number of universities had risen to 35, of which 3 were federally administered and 22 were under the provincial governments, with a combined enrollment of 71,819 students. A big spending boost by President Pervez Musharraf helped establish 51 new universities and awarding institutions during 2002-2008. This helped
triple university enrollment from 135,000 in 2003 to about 400,000 in 2008, according to Dr Ata ur Rehman who led the charge for expanding higher education during the Musharraf years. There are 161 universities with 1.5 million students enrolled in Pakistan as of 2014. R&D Investment Rise of research and publications at Pakistani universities began during Musharraf years when the annual budget for higher education was raised from Rs 500 million in 2000 to Rs 28 billion in 2008, to lay the foundation of a strong knowledge economy, according to former education minister Dr Ata ur Rehman. Student enrollment in universities increased from 270,000 to 900,000 and the number of universities and degree awarding institutions increased from 57 in 2000 to 137 by 2008. Government R&D spending jumped seven-fold as percentage of GDP from 0.1% in 1999 to 0.7% of GDP in 2007. It has since declined as percentage of GDP. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
A Plate of Biryani that Led to a Tale of Love between Japan and Pakistan
By Bismah Mughal
What started from a plate of biryani, turned into a lifelong fusion with the country she thought was dispersed with viciousness and hostility all around. One knock on her door back in Tokyo and the warmth of her Pakistani neighbors with the enticing aroma of chicken biryani in their hands and she was convinced, she had to visit Pakistan. Little did she know, her small trip to this land would be the start of a lasting tale.
Rie Mihara, an entrepreneur in Japan, had moved to Pakistan for good in the March of 2016. But what prompted her to leave behind her steady life and start a new one in this frenzied foreign land? Her story begins in 2011, when Japan was hit with a tsunami that left a large portion of the country in disarray.
“My mother and me, like most people around the world had a stereotypical picture of Pakistan in our heads, filled with violence and hostility. But in 2011, there was a tsunami that hit Japan. So me and my friend and my
teacher we visited the affected area to help the survivors, we used to make frequent visits and since I have a certificate in grief care therapy I used to help the survivors cope with their loss,” she began narrating her tale in an exclusive interview with The News.
She went on to recall: “There was a Pakistani family living in my neighborhood. When they found out about the voluntary work I’ve been doing, they knocked on my door one day. When I opened, they had a plate of biryani in their hands and they said, ‘We want to go to the natural disaster site with you and help the victims. Because when Pakistan was struck with a deadly earthquake in 2005, Japanese people had helped our people. Now we want to help them.’ That’s when I realized, Pakistan was different from what I thought it was.”
After visiting the country for the first time in 2014, Mihara returned in 2015 to Karachi and found her way to Karachi’s Jinnah Hospital. “It was Ramadan and a massive heatwave had hit Karachi that had taken the lives of over a thousand people. I visited Jinnah Hospital just to help the people and talk to them. I met an army doctor who asked me in Japanese, how I am doing and I said good. He then continued in Japanese saying, ‘Don’t worry you will get good health soon.’ I was surprised to find him speaking such good Japanese. That is when he told me how in 2011 when Japan had suffered the natural
disaster, he had memorized the phrase ... I was surprised to see that he had made so much effort for the Japanese victims, just out of love and empathy. That is when I told myself, my life is to be lived in Pakistan.”
"I went back and negotiated with my mother. It took half a year for me to convince her that Pakistan is not a scary country but then she agreed, and me along with her and my dog, moved to from Tokyo to Karachi in March of 2016, and have been happily living here since.”
Mihara shed light on a dream she finds herself working hard towards every day in this country: “There was one reason why I wanted to move here and make money here. When I have lots of money, I want to open up a small clinic and a school for the underprivileged people for free.”
“It will take me a long time to bring this dream into reality but I want this to be a thank you to Pakistan, for giving me not just biryani but lots of love and a home,” she concluded. - The News International
----------------------------------------------------------------- Dense Fog Is Coming Back again over Lahore
By Shahid Javed Burki
Pakistan’s environmental problem has many dimensions. All of them need to be the focus of public policy. The government has to move on several fronts at the same time. Not addressing the situation Pakistan confronts at this time will have consequences that would be hard to reverse. What should the new government do to reverse the trend that has been in set in place for decades?
Priority should be given to increasing people’s awareness of what is occurring all around them. I will begin with the problem of urban fog.
In November now for several years a number of environmental factors come together and result in settling a dense fog over Lahore and some of the major cities in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The latest World Health Organization report on pollution in the world’s major cities places New Delhi at top of the list. Three South Asian megacities make it to the list; the other two are Dhaka and Mumbai. The level of particulate pollution considered the most harmful to human health has spiked to more than 30 times the limit prescribed by the WHO, reaching 292 micrograms of PM10 per cubic meter of air in New Delhi.
According to a Government of India study, stubble burning contributed up to 26 per cent of the most harmful particulate m
from 2013 to 2014; another study found that it contributed as much as 50 per cent on certain days during the stubble-burning season. Such particular matters referred to as PM2.5 are 30 times as thin as a human hair and can penetrate deep within the lungs.
A story filed by The Washington Post’s Joanna Slater from the village of Madan Peri in the Indian Punjab describes the situation similar to the one that affects Lahore in Pakistan. “One by one, in the coming days, farmers in this compact village in northern India will set fire to the straw in their freshly harvested rice fields. Then it will drift southeast toward New Delhi, thickening the smog that has turned India’s capital into the world’s most polluted major city in the world.”
The story was put on its front page by the newspaper and drew a lot of attention from those in the United States who were planning to travel to the Indian capital for business reasons or for tourism. “Just weeks remain before the 29 million people living in greater Delhi are plunged into their annual battle with extreme air pollution,” continued Slater. These conditions also occur in Pakistan but with one difference. The authorities in India are taking steps to deal with the situation. In Pakistan at least up until now, those in power have ignored the situation.
In New Delhi, the government shuttered the last coal-fired power plant in Delhi and recently banned the use of
certain industrial fuels within the city. On days when pollution increases, other measures will kick in such as a halt to all construction activities and a ban on trucks entering Delhi. The Punjab state’s government is also addressing the problem of stubble burning. The central government is helping the activist state administration. It has earmarked finance to help farmers buy machinery that turns rice straw into mulch. It is also helping in a large-scale awareness program with songs on social media, television advertisements and village-by-village meetings urging farmers not to burn.
The government’s campaign seems to be having an impact. According to the state government, there were 81,000 fires after rice harvest in 2016, then the figure dropped to 44,000 in 2017. There is also a law on the books that allows the farmers using fires to clear their fields to be fined ranging from $35 to $140 but the provision has been used sparingly.
In Pakistan, the problem is compounded by the pervasive use of soft-coal burning brick kilns and the use of diesel by the motor-rickshaws that are the major source of transport in large cities such as Lahore. There are no studies to indicate the contribution of these factors to pollution. That information is required to design appropriate public policy.
That positive results that can come reasonably quickly from government action was demonstrated by Imran Khan when his party governed the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. There the Peshawar-based administration launched what was called the “billion tree tsunami.” The plan was to plant millions of trees on government- owned as well as private land, set of nurseries all over the province, and local communities were empowered to take care of the newly-planted saplings. As The Washington Post’s Pamela Constable wrote in a review of the initiative, “hundreds of thousands of trees were planted across the region, timber smuggling was virtually wiped out and cottage industry of backyard nurseries flourished.” Impressed by the results achieved by the PTI administration that governed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for five years after the elections of 2013, Imran Khan launched a “10 billion Tree Tsunami”. Officials say that they hope the program will foster environmental awareness in their impoverished, drought-plagued country, where both greed and necessity have left forests stripped as according to the World Bank they now cover only two per cent of all land.
More actions are needed and these will need to come from the federal government. It is now well known that South Asia will be the most-affected region in the world as the globe continues to warm. To reverse the trend that has begun to produce unprecedented weather events
around the globe, there is an urgent need for the world to act together. For Pakistan to play its part, it should begin to move away from burning of fossil fuels to generate electric power and invest in hydropower as well as solar and wind energy. - The Express Tribune
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