An uplink scheduling apparatus and method in a communication system are provided. In the uplink scheduling method, a scheduling metric is calculated for each Mobile Station (MS). An MS with a high priority level is selected according to the calculated scheduling metric. The number of subchannels and a product of a modulation order and coding rate (MPR) are extracted according to input variables for the selected MS. The number of subchannels to be allocated to the selected MS is determined according to the MPR and the subchannels are allocated to the selected MS. The scheduling metric is updated for the each MS.