LAHORE, Nov 16: The University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, (UAF) has earned a distinction of becoming the member of the world’s top 100 universities’ club in the subject of agricultural sciences. It has jumped 60 positions in the ranking within a year.

The UAF clinched 98th position worldwide in the National Taiwan University (NTU) World Ranking 2013. It is also shining among the top 20 universities in the Asia Pacific, also comprising Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Turkey, Japan, China and India with a score of 55.2. In 2012, the UAF was standing at 158th position in the world and 33rd place in the Asia Pacific with a meagre score of 14.96.

The universities are ranked for quality output of research leading to creation of new knowledge and solutions as well as human resource development. During the last one decade or so, the Higher Education Commission was striving to promote the quality of education and research and push some of them among the world’s top universities. The commission had also started issuing annual research output ranking of Pakistani universities to sensitise the ranking process.

It may be mentioned that four ranking agencies – NTU, Shanghai, Times and QS – release subject and geographic rankings annually on the basis of data of universities, compiled by databases, using search engines like Google. The ranking agencies are using webomatrics (a universities database) for scoring the universities on different parameters. The parameters are: courses offered, research work undertaken and other academic activities. Most importantly, the ranking agencies declare rankings online voluntarily without any application by the candidates or any obligations from either side.

The top three universities in the NTU World Ranking this year are: Wageningen University, the Netherlands; the University of California, Davis, and Cornell University, New York. It is also worth mentioning that over 70 of the top 100 universities are from the North America and Europe.

It is also an honour for the UAF and Pakistan that only four institutions from 57 countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) have been placed in the NTU world ranking. The universities are: UAF from Pakistan, University of Putra Malaya from Malaysia and two Turkish universities – Ankara University and Ataturk University.

When contacted, UAF Vice-Chancellor Prof Iqrar A Khan said it was a real achievement to get a position among top 100 universities in the world after a long struggle towards improving quality of education, research and producing qualified human resources.

He, however, admitted that 98th place was a slippery position and the university would be required to work hard to maintain the position next year.