Although several of India’s showpiece Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have made it into the league table of the world’s top 100 specialist universities compiled by the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), and released on September 5, none of the country’s 533 multidisciplinary universities figure in the master Top 200 league table. India’s highest ranked institution of tertiary education is the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, ranked 218 followed by the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (225) and IIT-Madras (281).
QS, which has been conducting research in higher education since 1990 “to meet the increasing public interest for comparative data and organisations”, shortlisted over 2,000 universities worldwide, evaluated 700 and ranked 400 in its latest 2011 survey. Universities are assessed on the parameters of academic reputation (40 percent peer assessment weightage); employer reputation (10 percent), citation per faculty (20 percent); faculty-student ratio (20 percent); proportion of international stud-ents (5 percent) and international faculty (5 percent). Moreover the survey ranks the world’s top 400 universities in five broad faculty areas: arts and humanities, engineering and technology; life sciences and medicine; natural sciences; social sciences and business management.
Britain’s Cambridge University topped the QS World University Rankings 2011 ending the six year domination of QS tables by Harvard University, USA ranked second this year. MIT (Boston), Yale, Oxford (UK), Imperial College (London), University College (London), Chicago University, University of Pennsylvania and Columbia (New York) ad seriatim constitute the QS Top 10. Routinely ranked as India’s best multidisciplinary varsity, the much-hyped Delhi University barely made it into the Top 400, ranked 398.
India’s specialised institutions of higher learning — strictly speaking not quite universities — have been better ranked in faculty league tables. In the engineering and technology discipline/faculty, IIT-Bombay is ranked 47 worldwide and IIT-Delhi No.52 with IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Madras ranked 63 and 68 respectively.
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The low 398th rank awarded to India’s showpiece Delhi University in the master league table has aroused some indignation in the media, even if not in the somnolent bowers of Indian academia. “With not a single Indian university featuring in the Top 200, the 2011 QS World University rankings make for grim reading. Instead of aiming for academic excellence, Indian universities have by and large, become factories for churning out degree holders,” lamented an editorial in The Times of India (September 16).
P.T. Chande, president of the Association of Indian Universities, is inclined to be more specific. “Around 50 percent of faculty posts are vacant in universities and colleges across the country while a large number of teachers are quitting jobs due to faulty government policies. Most universities lack quality teachers, thanks to the faulty selection procedures of teachers (like NET and SAT),” he said in an address to eastern India vice chancellors’ conference in early September.
However a senior official in the Union HRD ministry speaking on condition of anonymity, is less than perturbed about the dismal ranking of Indian varsities on QS and other league tables. “When rating agencies from the US, London or China send their circulars containing questionnaires to our universities, people here don’t reply or take them seriously. It is a problem of sensitisation and attitude. Now, we will ensure that our universities participate in these surveys enthusiastically, and I am sure they will record better rankings next year,” she says. “Moreover the Planning Commission is also in discussion with various stakeholders and experts for starting a similar Indian survey to galvanise the higher educa-tion sector as also to raise prestige of Indian education globally.”
In short, the ministry has resorted to a typically Indian response — fudge the issue and all will be well.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)