NEW DELHI: Some of India’s oldest Indian Institutes of Technology have decided to boycott all of the Times Higher Education rankings—considered one of the most prestigious along with QS world rankings for institutes of higher education— this year, saying that criteria used for rankings by the organisation is not transparent enough.
IITs including those in Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee in a joint statement on Thursday said that the decision not to participate in the rankings has been made after the THE failed to convince the institutions of the parameters and transparency in their ranking process.
"These IITs will reconsider their decision next year if Times Higher Education is able to convince them about the parameters and transparency in their ranking process," the statement said.
According to sources in the Union Human Resources Development ministry, the top IITs have been particularly peeved that some younger IITs have been ranked higher recently in THE rankings.
Director of one of the IITs confirmed this too.
“This is one of the issues we had raised when the discussions happened with THE officials. There should also be greater clarity on ratio and the calculation being used for the ranking and we have been constantly flagging this,” he said.
“With the THE, there are a lot of grey areas that are problematic. While, QS and the National Institutional Ranking Framework have been using latest data regarding research, students and other parameters, the THE is using for two year old data and we are not comfortable,” the director also said.
The HRD ministry too, urged by the IITs, has been asking the global ranking organisations, to revise the ranking parameters amid allegations that some of their criteria do not suit Indian institutions. These parameters include heavy weightage given to points such as foreign faculty and international students.