University of Karachi


The University of Karachi is a public research university located in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. Established through a national emergence and a followup of the University of Sindh in Jamshoro, the university was established with a status as "Federal University" in 1951 and designed by the Mohsin Baig as its chief architect.
With a total student body of 41,000 full-time students and a campus size spanning over 1200 acres, Karachi University is one of the largest university in Pakistan with a distinguished reputation for multi-disciplinary research in science and technology, medical, and social sciences. The university has over 53 Departments and 19 research institutes operating under nine faculties. There are over 893 academics and more than 2500 supporting staff working for the university.
In 2009, the university was named by now defunct THE-QS World University Rankings for the top 500 universities in the world, while it is ranked by QS ranking's in 2016 as among to the top 250 in Asia and among 701st in the world. In 2019 it was ranked 801st in the world and 251 in Asia. The university is a member of Association of Commonwealth Universities of the United Kingdom.

History

At the time of establishment of Pakistan as a sovereign state in 1947, the means for higher education and research were negligible and diminished in the country. Responding to the impending requirement of higher learning, Pakistan Government started establishing educational institutions of higher learning and research and thus underwent rapid modernization under a policy guided by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan. Its first Vice-chancellor was Dr. ABA Haleem. In 1953 it started its teaching and research activities at two faculties: the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Science.
For the first two years, the University of Karachi remained as an examination university for the affiliated colleges. Over the years, the enrollment expanded rapidly. Karachi University first intake was 50 students, the university now has 53 academic departments and 20 Research Centers and Institutes, under faculties of Social Sciences, Science, Islamic Studies, Engineering, Law, Pharmacy, Management and Administrative Sciences and Medicines. The enrollment of regular students at the campus is around 28,000. There are about 1,000 faculty members and more than 3,000 supporting staff.

Past appointed Vice-Chancellors

Vice-ChancellorsDepartment FacultyTenure Starting-dateTenure completed-date
Prof. Abu Bakr Ahmad HaleemPolitical Science23 June 195122 Jun 1957
Prof. Basheer Ahmad Hashmi23 June 195722 June 1961
Prof. Ishtiaq Hussain QureshiHistory23 June 19612 August 1971
Prof. Mahmud HussainEnglish Literature3 August 19719 April 1975
Prof. Saleemuzzaman Siddiqui Chemistry10 April 197516 January 1976
Prof. Ehsan RasheedEconomics7 January 197631 August 1979
Prof. S. Masum Ali TirmiziPhysics1 September 197931 August 1983
Prof. Jameel JalibiUrdu literature1 September 198331 August 1987
Prof. Manzooruddin AhmadPhilosophy1 September 19877 July 1990
Prof. S. Irtafaq AliBotany8 July 19906 July 1994
Prof. Abdul Wahab Institute of Business Administration, Karachi6 July 19944 April 1995
Prof. Abdul Wahab Institute of Business Administration, Karachi5 April 19959 November 1996
Prof. Hafeez A. PashaEconomics10 November 199624 July 1997
Prof. Usama AbbasiEconomics1 April 200624 July 2008
Prof. Zafar H. Zaidi25 July 19977 January 2001
Prof. Zafar Saeed Saify 12 January 200128 February 2001
Prof. Zafar Saeed Saify1 March 20015 January 2004
Prof. Pirzada QasimNeuroscience6 January 20049 February 2012
Prof. Dr. Muhammad QaiserBotany10 February 201224 January 2017
Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ajmal KhanBotany24 January 20174 May 2019
Prof. Dr. Khalid M. Iraqi Public Administration5 May 2019till date

Campus

The university campus area is over of land, situated 12 km away from the city center of Karachi. The university has about four percent International students who come from 23 different countries in the regions from Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The university has a high standard of teaching, with many professors being well-known scholars and academics of international repute. In a short span of 40 years, the university has risen to acquire a high status in the field of education in Pakistan as well as in the region.

Academic emphasis

The most prestigious research center of the university is the International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences which has over 500 students enrolled for PhD in organic chemistry, biochemistry, molecular medicine, genomics, nanotechnology and other fields. The Husein Ebrahim Jamal Research Institute of Chemistry, Dr. Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine and Drug Development and the Jamil-ur-Rahman Center for Genome Research are an integral part of this multi-disciplinary research center. It was selected as the UNESCO Center of Excellence in 2016. The university's physics and statistics departments are claimed to be well known departments and its research output plays a vital role in the development of science and technology in the country.
Furthermore, the department of mathematical sciences is one of the largest departments in the Faculty of Science, which has a three-floor building consisting of an electronic laboratory for computational mathematics.
The department of architecture has produced award-winning designers, architects and artists, who are making their mark in the professional world.

Library system

The University of Karachi's library, known as "Dr. Mahmud Hussain Library", has houses well over 400,000 volumes dating back to the 1600s, for researchers as well as for use by students of advance studies and faculty members. The library became the depository of the personal book collection of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Established and constructed in 1952, the Dr. Mahmud Hussain Library is an imposing five story and basement structure firmly placed in the center of campus activities. Teachers from over 100 affiliated colleges frequent the university, along with scholars from 19 research institutions. A loan and resource sharing system exists with other academic entities in the Karachi area. A digital library enables the scholars and students to access online books and journals. 25 librarians, 10 assistant librarians and around 90 nonprofessional staff help maintain the library. The building includes six reading rooms for general purposes and six for research. The International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences has within it the Latif Ebrahim Jamal Science Information Centre which is the national focal point for distance education
Previously called the Karachi University Library, it was renamed the Dr. Mahmud Hussain Library by unanimous resolution of the Karachi University Syndicate on 12 April 1976— the first death anniversary of Prof. Dr. Mahmud Hussain Khan. Mahmud Hussain served the university's Vice-Chancellor from 1971 to 1975 and the library was named in recognition of his contribution to the teaching of social sciences in Pakistan. Dr. Hussain was the first professor the university appointed to its faculty of International Relations and History. He introduced library science to Pakistan by instituting the Faculty of Journalism and Library Science at the university. He also actively worked to improve the status and pay scales of the library staff to make them at par with the university's other faculty members. The photos show that UoK remains seriously underfunded.

Karachi University Press

The university publishes books, texts, periodicals and other academic materials in-house through the Bureau of Composition, Compilation and Translation.

Faculties and departments

The University of Karachi has 9 faculties:
FacultyThe listed active Academic department and the academic Chair of the University of Karachi
Faculty of Social Sciences
Faculty of Engineering
Faculty of Management &Administrative Sciences
  • Department of Commerce
  • Department of Public Administration
  • Karachi University Business School
Faculty of Engineering
  • Department of Chemical Engineering
    • Faculty of Education
  • Department of Education
  • Department of Special Education
  • Department of Teacher Education
    • Faculty of Islamic studies
  • Department of Islamic Learning
  • Department of Quran-o-Sunnah
  • Department of Usul-ud-Din
  • Sirah Chair
    • Faculty of Law
  • School of Law
    • Faculty of Medicine
  • Karachi Medical Dental College
  • Offers MS in Surgery and MD in Medicine
    • Faculty of Pharmacy
  • Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
  • Department of Pharmaceutics
  • Department of Pharmacology
  • Department of Pharmacognosy
    • Faculty of Science
  • Department of Agriculture and Agribusiness
  • Department of Applied Chemistry
  • Department of Applied Physics
  • Department of Biochemistry
  • Department of Bio-Technology
  • Department of Botany
  • Department of Chemistry
  • Department of Computer Science
  • Department of Food Science and Technology
  • Department of Genetics
  • Department of Geology
  • Department of Geography
  • Department of Health and Physical Education
  • Department of Mathematical Sciences
  • Department of Microbiology
  • Department of Petroleum Technology
  • Department of Physics
  • Department of Physiology
  • Department of Statistics
  • Department of Zoology

    • Research institutes and centres

    Alumnus and people

    Since its establishment in 1951, the university has attracted prominent scholars and renowned educationist as its faculty members, researchers and associated scholars. Ravindra Kaushik, Scholars and educationists such as Iqbal Hussain Qureshi, Rafiuddin Raz, Mahmud Hussain, Saleemuzzaman Siddiqui, Abdul Qadeer Khan, I H Qureshi, Raziuddin Siddiqui, Atta-ur-Rahman, Prof.Khursheed Ahmed are few that have been affiliated with the institution. The faculty was drawn not only from Pakistan but also included eminent educationists from the United Kingdom and the United States.