The 12th edition of Quacquarelli Symonds’ (QS) list of top 200 universities from 82 nations has now been released. For the first time, two Indian institutions figure in the list, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, at 147th, and IIT Delhi (IIT-D) at 179th positions. IISc has not been ranked in the previous editions of QS rankings, and this is the first time the institute has made it to the list. IIT-D has jumped from its position of 235 in 2014. Other IITs also have improved their rankings considerably. IIT Bombay jumped from 222 last year to 202 this year, while IIT Madras bettered its position from 322 to 254.
Obviously, no revolutionary academic upheavals have taken place in any of these institutions over the last year. Their upward mobility is the result of QS introducing ‘refinements’ in their methodology to arrive at the rankings data. This year’s rankings are based on six performance indicators—academic reputation, employer reputation, student to faculty ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio and international student ratio. Citation per faculty is a new performance indicator that QS introduced this year. Academic reputation is based on a wide perception of the cutting-edge research taking place in different fields, whereas employer reputation is a pointer to the quality of graduates churned out.
The rankings went up for Indian institutions due to the introduction of citation per faculty. Citations essentially mean that one researcher’s work is cited by another in his or her papers. The more number of times the work is mentioned by others, the higher the impact of the work in a given field. IISc figured in this year’s list mainly due to the citation factor as this institute is acknowledged to produce the most number of papers each year. The same rationale is possibly applicable for IIT-D’s jump.
While IITs and IISc have a reputation of producing the best graduates in India, they do not allow foreign students to freely enrol in academic programmes. Employer reputation is linked to an institution’s ability to attract students globally. While one can seek admission to MIT or Stanford irrespective of one’s nationality, Indian institutions are not open to the entry of students from abroad.
Although weighted only at 5 per cent, international faculty and student ratios do not favour Indian institutions. Faculty recruitments are confined to Indian citizens and even visiting faculty appointments of foreign nationals are notoriously bureaucratic. The international student ratio is also very poor not only due to our archaic policies but also due to our inability to provide world-class ambience, curriculum and faculty.
India spends less than 1 per cent of its GDP on research, much below BRICS nations, although there were periodic announcements over the past decade and a half that it is going up to 2 per cent. Thus, the density of scientists is one of the lowest in India—40 per cent of Indian-born scientists have migrated to greener pastures in the West, a study said. India’s economy is third in terms of purchasing power behind only China and the US, but we spend much less on research. The grant application process in our funding agencies is so bureaucratic that many researchers don’t even consider it. Traditionally, research and teaching have been delinked in our university system, but to move up in global ratings, such disconnects have to be brought down drastically. Universities should be viewed as knowledge factories, students as future knowledge creators, and faculty as mentors.
Indian universities lack real autonomy in academic, administrative and financial matters unlike in many countries. Education being in the concurrent list of our Constitution, state and Central governments or their agencies exercise undue control over the functioning of universities.
If India’s higher education has to benchmark globally, there is no escape from adopting globally accepted practices to further higher education and research. That means an overhaul of the university system. But, there appears to be no political will. Therefore, the prospects of higher education in India seem bleak.
drjk.sct@gmail.com
Jayakrishnan is a professor at IIT Madras and former VC of the University of Kerala