No Bangladeshi university, neither public nor private, found a place at the top level of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Ranking 2022 unveiled on Tuesday.
The positions of Dhaka University (DU) and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) remained unchanged at the 801-1000 range, while private universities Brac and North South (NSU) placed in the 1001-1200 range on their first appearance.
There are 49 public universities and over a hundred private universities that are operational in Bangladesh, according to the University Grants Commission (UGC).
DU has slid down the rankings over the past 10 years, having stood at over 601 in 2012.
In the 2022 ranking, QS neither specified positions nor the overall score for universities standing below 494, rather mentioning the names of several universities in a range.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US again topped the list or the 10th consecutive year with a perfect score of 100. They were followed by Oxford, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, and Harvard University.
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National University of Singapore placed top among Asian universities, like last year, and 11th overall. A total 26 universities from the continent placed in the top 100 universities, and 390 Asian universities made the full list.
The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) is the top ranked South Asian university at 177th overall. Four Pakistani universities and 18 Indian universities are ahead of all Bangladeshi universities in the newly published QS rankings.
Sri Lanka is the only other South Asian country to make the list.
In a press release, NSU celebrated their first appearance on the QS World Rankings and said they continue to make significant strides towards their goals of becoming one of the top 100 universities in Asia and the top 1,000 in the world.
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The QS ranking is the only international university ranking to have received approval from the International Ranking Expert Group (IREG), and is viewed as one of the three most-widely read university rankings in the world, the NSU press release further said.
However, DU vice-chancellor (VC) Prof Akhtaruzzaman told this newspaper the university is not paying attention to any rankings right now.
“We are focusing on expansion and development in the field of fundamental research, as well as in amplifying the quality and environment of education. If we focus on these matters, our ranking will improve anyway,” the DU VC added.
Buet VC Satya Prasad Majumder could not be reached for comment.
Each of the 1,300 universities evaluated in the QS World Rankings were assessed according to six key metrics: academic reputation (40%), employer reputation (10%), citations per faculty (20%), faculty/student ratio (20%), international faculty ratio (5%), and international student ratio (5%).
QS publishes the World University Rankings annually. The QS publisher collaborated with Times Higher Education (THE) magazine to publish its international league tables from 2004 to 2009, before both started to announce their own versions.
