Recently, Times Higher Education (THE), a reputed international higher education agency, has announced its first Asia-Pacific University Ranking 2017 to analyze the region’s growing pattern in the higher education sector. THE’s Asia-Pacific University Ranking 2017 evaluated universities across 38 nations in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania. The overall ranking features just over 200 universities from 13 different nations. The Asia-Pacific University rankings are based upon 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators into five major areas: teaching (the learning environment), research (volume, income and reputation), citations (research influence), international outlook (staff, students and research) and industry income(knowledge transfer). According to the announced ranking, China has been represented 00 second place with 52 universities after Japan with 69 universities. If we look at the brief profile of these top ranked Chinese universities; the 2nd top Peking University was founded in 1898 and was the firs t national university in Chinese modem history, The university consists of 31 colleges and 14 departments with the largest university library in China containing more than 4 million volumes, including more than 1 million thread-bound Chinese books.
The 4th top Tsinghua University is one of the most selective institutions in the world and situated in northwest Beijing; in the Haidian district, which was traditionally reserved specifically for universities and other academic institutes. It is recognized as complete research university with 20 schools and 54 departments. As per QS World University Rankings 2017, another reputed higher education ranking, as compared to one Pakistani universities among top 500 universities, 8 are from India, 21 from China, 5 from Turkey; 3 from Saudi Arabia, 5 from Malaysia and 14 from South Korea. According to World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report 2015-16 , under the heads of Higher Education and Training, Pakistan’s ranking is way down at 124th out of 140 countries as compared t0 India at 90th, Bangladesh 122nd. Nepal 113rd, China 28th, Iran 69th, Bhutan 103rd, Qatar 27th, UAE 37th and Saudi Arabia 49th.