Islamabad:Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairman Dr. Javaid Laghari has asked universities to strengthen their indigenous quality culture and make wholehearted efforts to improve their international visibility.

He was addressing, through video conferencing, the focal persons of public and private universities of Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab on Monday, in connection with the HEC initiative to carry out quality-based ranking of higher education institutions (HEIs) aiming at international compatibility, primarily based on the QS Ranking System acceptable widely across the world.

In this regard, all public and private universities of the country have been asked to provide data by July 15, 2011. The Statistical Information Unit (SIU), HEC, held an orientation session for universities of three provinces on Monday while a similar session will be held for universities of Sindh and Islamabad on Tuesday.

NUST Quality Enhancement Cell (QEC) Director Dr Muhammad Ismail was the facilitator who shared his experiences of NUST in the context of QS ranking while HEC QEC DG Zia Batool introduced different initiatives of HEC in the context of quality assurance.

The chairman said that the HEC has taken various initiatives to bring HEIs of Pakistan at par with international standards. “Ranking is one of the measures to scale the success of efforts to achieve international competitiveness in education research and innovation. Since QS World Ranking is considered as one of the effective quality based ranking of HEIs at international level so HEC has desired to build the capacity of Pakistani universities to get more international visibility through reflection in international rankings including QS Ranking,” he said.

While requesting the universities to meet the deadline for provision of authentic data, Dr Laghari said that university rankings are very important for students, parents, employers, government organizations, policy makers and other stakeholders. “The results of rankings change the context in which universities function. It is basically a self-learning and self-improving exercise which benefits the academic and research communities programmes of the country.”

“Universities which failed to provide data will be ranked zero by placing them at the bottom in the ranking list to be published through print media,” he added.

In his presentation, Dr Ismail explained the significance of university ranking as well as various ranking systems currently prevalent around the globe, while focusing on status and process of QS Ranking through responding to queries on this ranking system.The news.