HYDERABAD: Osmania University is one of the 30 Indian universities to have made it to the top 1,000 universities in the world as per the Times’ Higher Education World University Rankings 2018 published Tuesday. It is among only eight state government-funded universities in India to figure in the rankings despite facing a fund crunch and staff shortage.
Two AP universities also figure in the rankings — Andhra University (AU) and Sri Venkateswara University (SVU). Both universities are ranked with OU in the 801-1000 band. Two other AP universities are in the 1001+ category of ranking — the private Gitam University-Visakhapatnam and Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University-Anantapur.
OU, AU and SVU had the same overall score of 21.4. However, SVU had the highest Citations score of 20.2, compared to 14.5 of OU and a meagre 4.3 of AU, indicating its quality of research output. While OU had a slightly higher industry income, SVU had highest score in other parameters which include teaching, research and international outlook. The AP universities have fallen in rankings compared to last year when AP had three universities in the top 1000, including Acharya Nagarjuna University (ANU) apart from AU and SVU. SVU’s ranking fell from the 601-800 band last year. OU and AU were ranked in the same band last year.
One striking difference between OU and AU is the female-to-male students ratio. While the ratio for AU stood at 42:58, in OU the ratio stood at 29:71, showing a steep gender gap.Overall, the performance of Indian universities in this year’s ranking was poor. The top rank was again grabbed this year by Indian Institute of Science-Bangalore but its ranking fell from 201-250 last year to 251-300 this year. Like last year, none of the Indian varsities made it to the top 200 this year. China, however, has had two universities in the top 50 and a total of 60 universities in the top 1000. British universities, Oxford University and Cambridge University , were ranked first and second respectively.