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How relevant are the global rankings for Indian universities?

02/12/2015 5:06 PM / Leave a comment

The Economic Times | By IANS | 2 December, 2015 | By Gokul Bhagabati  |

NEW DELHI: If you cannot find Indian universities among the top institutions of higher education in various global rankings, do not blame our academic standards but acknowledge the fact that a lot of research in the country is being done in vernacular languages, Union Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani recently suggested. “A lot of hue and cry is raised about our higher education institutes not figuring in global rankings. The reason is not the lack of high-quality research but in India, a large section of research work is done in vernacular languages whereas global rankings only consider research done in English,” she said during a national seminar on the new education policy in the capital this month.  Considering the fact that two universities from our neighbouring and non-English speaking China featured among the top 100 in this year’s “Times Higher Education World University Rankings” while India drew a blank, can the minister’s argument stand the scrutiny of a better ranking system that deemphasises on “universal” standards or takes into account specific contexts in which the universities in developing countries operate?  Or is it just an attempt to cover up the poor performance of the India’s higher education system as reflected by the poor global rankings? Opinions of experts are varied in this regard.  “Rankings help students make important decisions about their career and these also provide universities an opportunity to measure their own performance and chart out a course for further improvement,” Phil Baty, editor-at-large of the Times Higher Education Magazine, told IANS during a visit here.

“However, I believe that there is a need to recognise different contexts in which universities in emerging economies function and, therefore, we publish a separate ranking for higher education institutions of BRICS nations and other emerging economies,” Baty noted.  However, Indian universities failed to find a place even in top 20 positions of BRICS and Emerging Economies Rankings 2015 – a list dominated by the higher education institutes in China.  The next round of the rankings will be published during the “Times Higher Education and BRICS and Emerging Economies Universities Summit,” to be held at the O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat, Haryana, from December 2-4.  Baty pointed out that the separate rankings for BRICS and emerging nations do not dilute the importance of global rankings as the basic parametres used in developing these rankings are same.  “What is holding Indian universities back is lack of funding, political commitment to change and inadequate international networking,” Baty, who is also the editor of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, said.

Baty’s observations were partly backed by Sudhir Kumar Sopory, vice chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). According to him, even JNU, that ranked 71 in the “2015 BRICS and Emerging Economies Rankings”, needs to work on its number of foreign students and faculty to improve global ranking.  “Where we lack right now is the number of foreign students and faculty, and the number of citations,” he was recently quoted as saying by a national daily.  “Why should we be hiding from rankings while we use all other international benchmarks to understand the progress that our economy or society has made? In my view rankings are fairly objective and not ‘managed’ as perceived by some,” stated Sreeram Chaulia, a noted world affairs analyst.  “Instead of criticising the rankings we should introspect and take steps to improve quality of research and teaching at higher educational institutions,” added Chaulia, professor at O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU). “Appreciating the rankings require a degree of self-criticism,” he pointed out.  According to Aman Shah from JGU, an expert in governance and management of higher education institutions, making a bid for the top positions would require us to build a culture of competitiveness and innovativeness. For Kathleen Modrowski, dean, Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, while Indian universities have much to achieve in terms of global rankings, Indians have made a definite mark.

Modrowski, who worked as a consultant at the United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), at its Paris headquarters for many years and helped build up the global studies and experiential learning programmes of the Global College of Long Island University (LIU), New York before moving to India, however, agreed that blaming the rankings for not having Indian institutes among the top in the global rankings, would only amount to barking up the wrong tree.  Reforms such as removing bureaucratic hurdles, promoting independent thinking, allowing more mobility in the education system and more collaboration among universities within and outside India, according to her, can help propel the country towards a better higher education system that can match with the best in the world. – (Gokul Bhagabati can be contacted at gokul.b@ians.in)  –  Courtesy

IISc Bangalore becomes first Indian institution to be among the top 100 world universities: World University Rankings | Times Higher Education

12/11/2015 10:42 AM / Leave a comment

The Times of India | Manash Pratim Gohain | TNN | November 12, 2015 |

NEW DELHI: For the first time, India features in the top 100 of the Times Higher Education’s (THE) world university rankings. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore enters the list of elite universities for engineering and technology with 99th rank.  The THE released the latest rankings of the world’s top 100 universities in the field of engineering and technology on Wednesday revealing a strong year across Asia. The top 10 of the list are dominated by US institutions with Stanford, California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the top three positions. However, this is a year of Asian progress, with the US holding a total of 31 positions – down from 34 last year – while Asia holds 25 positions in the top 100, up from 18 last year.

Asian universities occupied six positions in the top 30 this year, with Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan and India all improving their representation while Singapore and Hong Kong maintained their last year’s status. Phil Baty, editor, THE World University Rankings said, “Like our flagship World University Rankings, the Times Higher Education ranking for engineering and technology subjects applies rigorous standards, using tough global benchmarks across all of a global research university’s key missions – teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. But although the table employs the same range of 13 performance indicators they have been carefully recalibrated to fit more closely the research culture in this subject.

“This year’s stand-out success story has to be India, making its debut in this prestigious engineering and technology ranking, which represents the top few per cent of world universities for these subject disciplines. Whether you look at high-tech sectors such as IT or aerospace engineering or more traditional fields such as steelmaking, India’s engineering and technology prowess is highly visible the world over in the shape of companies based in India or run by people born in India, such as Google and Microsoft, Infosys and Wipro or Tata and Mittal. ”While the US and UK still dominate the upper echelons of this table, Asia is shifting the balance of power, proving that its institutions are world-class in this field. Six Asian universities – the National University of Singapore, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, Peking and Tsinghua Universities from China and Korea’s Seoul National University – make the top 30. Asia’s success mounts serious pressure on universities in North America and Europe, which will have to run fast just to stand still in this table.”  –  Courtesy      /   World University Rankings | Times Higher Education

Global rankings are not comprehensive

24/10/2015 5:10 PM / Leave a comment

Gauri Kohli | Hindustan Times |  October 24, 2015 |

Are Indian institutions really falling short of global standards or are the global rankings deficient in measuring all parameters that apply to the Indian system? Times Higher Education (THE) rankings, for instance, measure institutions on the basis of teaching, research: volume, income and reputation; citations: research influence; industry income: innovation; and international outlook: staff, students and research. Rahul Choudaha, chief knowledge officer and senior director of strategic development at the World Education Services, New York City, says, “Rankings in general are a proxy of reputation but do not fully capture the quality, complexity and diversity of higher education systems around the world. While it is critical to raise the bar of quality in Indian higher education, rankings are not the best metric at this stage of the maturity of the system. Before rankings, it is imperative to address two fundamentals of higher education systems – institutional accountability and regulatory framework. Unless a robust regulatory and quality assurance framework can ensure institutional accountability, the rankings will give misguided directions.”

Choudaha also adds a word of caution, saying that premature experiments with rankings will widen the gap between different types of institutions. “For example, well resourced institutions like IITs in niche technical fields will become the symbol of quality, while the system itself will be struggling due to an incoherent regulatory framework. Three-year degree colleges where nearly three-fourth of all Indian students study will further fall behind as rankings will focus on engineering,” he says. It is a fact that each ranking system, be it QS, THE or Shanghai looks at slightly different parameters. “Wherever similar parameters are used, there is a difference in weightage assigned and hence results could be different. However, some parameters that all these systems look at are publications in reputed peer reviewed journals, citations, collaborations and internationalisation. In these parameters, except a few institutes like IISc or IITs, others are certainly found wanting. These ranking systems do not look at social perspective of education, inclusiveness and participation of all category and strata of society,” says Anil D Sahasrabudhe, chairman, AICTE. – Courtesy

HRD Ministry unveils ranking framework for colleges and universities : National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF)

30/09/2015 10:54 AM / Leave a comment

The New Indian Express | By: Express News Service | New Delhi | September 30, 2015 |

HRD Minister Smriti Irani said the new ranking framework has been drafted to provide “an Indian context to educational aspirations and needs” HRD Minister Smriti Irani said the new ranking framework has been drafted to provide “an Indian context to educational aspirations and needs”

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry Tuesday unveiled a first-of-its-kind indigenous ranking framework for higher education institutions, in response to global rankings in which Indian universities and colleges usually do not fare too well. The framework is different from global rankings in that it will judge institutions based on country-specific parameters. HRD Minister Smriti Irani said the new ranking framework has been drafted to provide “an Indian context to educational aspirations and needs”. This will, she added, help institutions that conduct research in languages other than English and are focused on inclusive education, two factors that are overlooked by international agencies. The government aims to come out with the first round of ranking before the next academic year.

The initiative is open to both private and public institutions across all disciplines and is not mandatory. However, VS Oberoi, secretary, higher education, said that all 122 centrally-funded institutions — including all central universities, IITs and IIMs —will participate in the first round of ranking which will be unveiled by April next year. The framework is primarily divided into two categories: Category A will cover institutions with academic autonomy and greater focus on research and category B will comprise colleges and centres affiliated to a university and more focused on teaching. An institution can volunteer to be ranked in both categories. Justifying the division of the framework into two categories, Professor Surendra Prasad, chairman of the National Board of Accreditation, said this would enable “an apple-to-apple comparison”. – Courtesy

Govt unveils indigenous ranking framework for higher education : 30 September 2015 | Prashant K. Nanda |

The ranking will be done by an independent and autonomous body and the exercise will be an annual affair

New Delhi: The government on Tuesday unveiled an indigenous ranking framework for higher educational institutions that it believes will give Indian institutions a competitive platform free of any international bias. The framework will evaluate institutions on five parameters—teaching, learning and resources (TLR); research, professional practice and collaborative performance (RPC); graduation outcome (GO); outreach and inclusivity (OI); and perception (PR) of end users. Initially, it will be voluntary for institutions to sign up for the ranking. Institutions will have to provide data online by 31 December, and the final ranking will be unveiled in the first week of April before the new academic session begins, higher education secretary Vinay S. Oberoi said.

The ranking will be done by an independent and autonomous body and the exercise will be an annual affair. At an event to unveil to ranking framework, human resources development (HRD) minister Smriti Irani cited three fundamental reasons for coming up with an indigenous ranking framework. She said international ranking agencies only consider research work done in English; the body of work in regional languages is not considered. Social inclusion or the reservation system is the second reason and giving new institutions a level playing field with older institutions is the other key reason behind the move, Irani said. The exercise will have an Indian context and reflect educational aspiration of Indians but shall be done in a completely “transparent manner”, she said. “The National Institutional Ranking Framework marks a paradigm shift by including perceptions of students and parents in the ranking,” Irani said.

“Inclusivity of our institutions is not taken into account in international rankings,” she said, and added that the ranking framework will provide a transparent means for institutions to engage with students. When asked whether reservations or social inclusion will take away from the competitiveness of institutions as social inclusion is not always based on merit, Oberoi said this aspect was part of the institutional framework. “It is not going to alter the (reservations) policy but reflect it,” the secretary added. University Grants Commission chairman Ved Prakash said he does not see any disadvantage because of this parameter as it is just one of the five key parameters for evaluating an institution. For the last two years, the HRD ministry has been deliberating on the subject and it picked up pace in the last one year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought development of an indigenous ranking for Indian institutions. The initial impetus for such a ranking came after Indian universities, including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) failed to garner a respectable ranking year after year in the World University Rankings, done by various international agencies like Times Higher Education and Quacquarelli Symonds or QS. None of the Indian institutes featured among the Top 200 universities. However, earlier this month, British ranking agency Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) ranked the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, at 147 and 179, respectively, in the QS World University Rankings for 2015-16.

This is the first time in years that two Indian institutes have been placed in the Top 200 of global education. The ministry will rank institutions vertically—engineering, management, universities, etc. Besides, it will also create two categories. Category A: those focusing on research and teaching; and Category B: those focusing primarily on teaching. Keeping in mind the diversity of institutions, both in terms of type and quality, the idea of a single overall ranking was abandoned in favour of separate rankings based on education verticals, said Surendra Prasad, chairman of the National Board of Accreditation, an autonomous body that accredits technical education subjects. He is part of a panel of experts involved in devising the ranking framework. The ministry on Tuesday unveiled the ranking framework for engineering and management. In the next four weeks, it will come out with the frameworks for other sectors. – Courtesy

Click here Visit the Portal of National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), MHRD.

Click here to download Ranking Framework for Engineering Institutions

Click here to download Ranking Framework for Management Institutions

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) has been accepted by the MHRD and launched by Honourable Minister for Human Resource development on 29th September 2015. This framework outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country.  This framework outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country. The methodology draws from the overall recommendations broad understanding arrived at by a Core Committee set up by MHRD, to identify the broad parameters for ranking various universities and institutions. The parameters broadly cover “Teaching, Learning and Resources,” “Research and Professional Practices,” “Graduation Outcomes,” “Outreach and Inclusivity,” and “Perception”. Although the Ranking Frameworks are similar, the exact methodologies are domain specific. Ranking methods have been worked out for engineering and management institutions, while those for other domains will be announced soon.

A new imagination for Indian universities in the context of global rankings of educational institutions.

18/12/2014 3:01 PM / Leave a comment

The Hindu | Opinion » Comment |  December 17, 2014| C. Raj Kumar |

Indian universities need a transformational change for them to become relevant in the context of global rankings of educational institutions.

The Times Higher Education BRICS and Emerging Economies Rankings 2015, which gives new insights into the performance and contribution of universities in BRICS and emerging economies, demonstrates a stronger and sharper attention to issues of quality and excellence to be paid by India. These rankings give comprehensive data on 100 universities in 18 emerging economies of the world. The results have shown that out of the top 10 universities, three are from China, three are from Turkey, one is from Taiwan, one is from Russia, one from Brzail and one from South Africa. There is not a single Indian university in the top 20 universities. Only the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, ranks 25 on the list. This year’s rankings have once again shown the extraordinary progress achieved by Chinese universities. Turkey is another great example of a strong performer in this year’s rankings; besides the three mentioned, eight institutions figure in the top 100.

Besides China, another performer has been Russia (seven Russian universities can be found in the top 100). There is a substantial focus on the importance of international rankings of universities among Russian universities and policymakers. There is also a significant impetus for capacity building to improve quality of education and to promoting excellence in all aspects of university governance. In this context, Russia has embarked on an ambitious initiative called “Project on Competitiveness Enhancement of Leading Russian Universities Among Global Research and Education Centres.” This is expected to be a transformational initiative for Russian universities to seek a stronger presence in global rankings. Project 5-100 is a new initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation government in order to support the best universities in the country. Its vision, says Alexander Povalko, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, is to “…support the best universities in Russia, with a desire to see at least five of them enter the top 100 of the leading global university rankings by 2020…Project 5-100 is a comprehensive academic excellence initiative that unites top-tier Russian universities behind the goal of deep transformation of the institutions according to the best international models and practices.” There is a collective consciousness emerging within many universities to seek excellence that will ultimately help them fare well in international rankings.

The way forward for India

While India has 11 universities in the top 100, most of them have actually climbed down in this year’s rankings. Indian universities need a transformational change for them to become relevant in the context of global rankings of universities. The last two decades have witnessed extraordinary changes in university systems around the world. India needs to take into account these developments and how they are affecting and impacting the nature of higher education around the world. The higher education system in India, including the university governance systems, needs to consider the following reforms and policy initiatives. First, there is an urgent need to recognise that not all universities need to be engaged in the same manner on different aspects of institution building. They need to be treated differently depending on the kind of contribution they are making. Indian universities should not be differentiated based on whether they are public or private; the differentiation instead should be based on quality, performance and contribution with more resources being made available for universities that are performing exceedingly well. We also need to recognise that not all universities in India need to be research focussed, but they need to excel in other areas and should be measured for their quality and excellence on those focal areas of university development.

Second, taking inspiration from the Project 5-100 initiative, India could consider empowering 50 of its top universities in every possible manner to seek global excellence. For this there needs to be a clear mandate, with funding and resources given to these 50 universities to augment their capacities. While choosing them, policymakers should choose as their main selection criteria institutional diversity and the institutions’ potential for achieving global excellence. Ten Central universities, 10 State universities, 10 private universities, 10 deemed universities and 10 institutions of national importance could be considered. This diversity will enable India to build strong capacity for establishing a few model institutions of excellence that can compete globally.

Third, the issue of regulatory reform has been the heart of policy reforms in higher education. There is an urgent need to seek a complete overhaul of the regulatory framework. Universities in India need to be made more autonomous; they need freedom, in every sense of the word, from both government and from regulatory bodies. The agenda of universities needs to be established by the faculty and students, keeping in mind the needs and aspirations of everyone in society.

Funding for research
Fourth, there is no doubt that world-class universities are built and nurtured with a strong focus on research. There is a need to substantially increase the amount of funding that is currently available for research in Indian universities. This aspect of policy seeks significant reform, both in terms of increasing the quantum of funding as well as in the policy and management framework of disbursing research grants. The existing framework to disburse grants is a multilayered and complex system and leads to frustration and inordinate delays among faculty members who are trying for grants. There is also a need to significantly incentivise research and publications among faculty members. The current system of faculty recruitment, appraisal, assessment, promotion and rewards is not necessarily based on performance as measured through research contributions and publications. Fifth, it is important that we need to focus on internationalisation of faculty members and students within Indian universities. Almost all Indian universities have faculty members who are only Indian nationals. Universities in India are unlike most parts of the developed world and also many countries in the emerging economies, which hire faculty members from around the world. In a world that is globalised, knowledge creation and sharing cannot be limited because of nationality and place of origin. World-class universities have always attracted faculty and students from around the world. Indian universities need to learn from the experiences from other countries in BRICS and emerging economies. There has to be a new imagination for Indian universities — one which draws inspiration from the past, but will also have to look to the future. Transformational change needs to take place at every level of policymaking, regulation and governance in higher education if Indian universities are serious about seeking global excellence and achieving higher rankings. (C. Raj Kumar is the Vice Chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University. He delivered the keynote address at the Times Higher Education BRICS and Emerging Economies Universities Summit that was held in Moscow on December 3-4.)

Courtesy

Indian universities miss out on another global ranking; US News

30/10/2014 3:14 PM / Leave a comment

The Times of India | M Ramya, TNN | Oct 30, 2014 |

CHENNAI: Even as the ministry of human resource development readies an India-centric ranking of higher educational institutions, just four Indian institutions figure on another list of top universities in the world. The inaugural global ranking by US education analysis and ranking website US News also reveals that no Indian institution can match up to the top 300 in the world.  University of Delhi, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, IIT-Bombay and IIT-Kharagpur have been ranked 316th, 323rd, 405th and 484th, respectively. But University of Delhi and IISc, at 45th and 46th places respectively, figure among the top 50 institutions in Asia. IIT-Madras is not on the list.  Four of the top five institutions in the Global Universities Ranking are based in the US. Harvard University has occupied the first position, followed by MIT, University of California – Berkeley, and Stanford University. Oxford University in the UK comes fifth, followed by Cambridge University, California Institute of Technology, University of California – Los Angeles, University of Chicago and Columbia University. US News has been ranking US institutions for 30 years.

US News has listed out the top 500 institutions based on 10 indicators that measure their academic research performance and global and regional reputations. “Students can use these rankings to explore the higher education options that exist beyond their own countries’ borders and to compare key aspects of schools’ research missions,” said a description of the rankings on the website.  Only institutions that were among the top 200 universities as per the Thomson Reuters’ global reputation survey over the last five years were included in the ranking. The institutions also had to be among those which published the most number of articles in the last five years. The institutions were then ranked based on 10 indicators that included global and regional research reputation, publications, normalised citation impact, total citations, number and percentage of highly cited papers, international collaboration, number of PhDs awarded and number of PhDs awarded per academic staff member.

Speaking about such rankings by international agencies earlier, IIT-Madras director Bhaskar Ramamurthi had said, “Rankings are important. But we are finding that the parameters on which they are based are evolved to suit certain types of universities – globalised comprehensive ones. These are places where nearly half the students and faculty are from other parts of the world and where all subjects are taught. Most of the IITs only deal with engineering. We have a problem with the way such surveys are conducted.”  He said internationalisation and subjective opinion carry a lot of weightage. The US News ranking gives 12.5% weightage each to global research reputation and regional research reputation. Moreover, India has no comprehensive university. In undergraduate education, India is mostly dependent on an affiliated college system. The methodology of the new India-centric ranking system being evolved primarily by the IITs will not be much different from that used by organizations ranking universities across the world, Ramamurthi said. “We will look at employer reputation, faculty-student ratio and probably do an academic survey. We will ask the right questions,” he said. The deadline for the India-centric ranking is the 2015 academic year. It will help students gauge the quality of Indian institutions, Ramamurthi added.

Courtesy

Poor marks for research

13/10/2014 10:29 AM / Leave a comment

The New Indian Express | Written by Taberez Ahmed Neyaz | October 11, 2014  .

There has been much debate about improving the global rankings of Indian universities. Many consider these university rankings to be skewed towards Western countries. But this view fails to account for the performance of Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore and Hong Kong, which do well in these world rankings. In the 2014 Times Higher Education rankings, for instance, there are a total of 24 universities in the top 200 from these countries. Others argue that Indian universities should participate in the rankings, even if they are biased in favour of the West, in order to measure where they stand in comparison to others. This view is supported only by a minority and faces strong resistance. There is a need to create India-specific rankings of universities that can also involve Saarc nations, a view supported by the prime minister’s office. Yet, it isn’t clear how this India-specific ranking will help compare Indian universities with world-class ones. But the common thread is that there are problems with the way research is conducted in India. In order to find out why, let’s consider the issue of research at two levels — doctoral research leading to a PhD and faculty research leading to publications. Certain fundamental issues have badly affected doctoral research in India. First, there are problems with basic infrastructure for doctoral students even in the most reputed Central universities. Doctoral students are not given working space. In the absence of office space, students prefer to stay at home instead of coming to university. Although the University Grants Commission (UGC) has now started providing scholarships to all students enrolled in MPhils and PhDs, there is no mechanism yet to create accountability. Thus, many students enrolled in a PhD programme work outside the university, which they are not allowed to do in the West, if they are recipients of aid. Students are expected to teach or work as research or teaching assistants. This is in contrast to India, where PhD students are not allowed to teach, and thus cannot grow as teachers or researchers. As a result, the final thesis is a haphazard piece of work.

Let me now turn to the faculty research, which is a more serious issue. After the introduction of the Academic Performance Index (API) score, faculty members have been asked to publish in refereed journals or journals with ISBN numbers. This means there is no difference between a top-tiered journal and one published from unknown places. In other words, though the UGC has introduced the API system, there is no mechanism to monitor the quality of publications. Although the Jawaharlal Nehru University has tried to categorise journals based on UGC guidelines, not all departments participated. One can also question the way the UGC has categorised journals based on the impact factor, which is heavily skewed in favour of the sciences and engineering. This is in contrast to most of the world’s top universities, which rank journals and reward faculty members who publish in top-tier journals. This categorisation is done by the respective departments.

Courtesy

HRD Panel working on a ranking framework; Indian ranking system

10/10/2014 10:37 AM / Leave a comment

Gauri Kohli, Hindustan Times | New Delhi, October 08, 2014

The human resource development ministry has proposed the formation of a committee that will work on developing a framework for India-specific rankings. “Indian universities (and colleges) will be ranked in comparison with peer universities/colleges. Foreign universities/colleges will be included in this. The parameters and factors will be selected based on what is relevant for bachelor’s and master’s programmes, research programmes, and for different disciplines such as sciences, engineering, medicine, law, liberal arts, fine arts, etc. The Indian ranking system is proposed to be ready by next academic year,” says Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director, IIT Madras. Elaborating on the need for an India-specific ranking, Ramamurthi says: “We need such a system because our higher education institutions are organised discipline-wise and not as comprehensive universities, unlike in most other countries. We have a vast network of affiliated colleges and their quality of bachelor’s and master’s degrees matter more than the universities they are affiliated to. We do not have a policy of encouraging foreign students and foreign faculty at present. Existing ranking systems are suited for globalised comprehensive universities with a foreign student population and employer footprint.”

The India rankings should be conceived to serve as a tool that empowers young people to make more informed choices about the study options available to them, say experts. “The rankings must grade institutions based on particular criteria that are most applicable to Indian higher education. The aim should be to give students a truly independent assessment of the strengths of institutions,” says Karthick Sridhar, founder, ICAA. ICAA has been invited by the Karnataka government to design a framework to rate all the universities in the state. “A committee comprising the higher education secretary, academic leaders and vice chancellors are discussing the framework. Some of the factors that will be considered and those which do not yet feature in the global rankings are: inclusiveness and social impact; governance and administration; patents filed and received; accreditation; infrastructure; class diversity etc. Universities will be invited to submit the necessary data and a robust analysis will be done to arrive at the ratings. The model will be on the lines of global rankings so that the ratings could be used to perform better at a national, BRICS, regional and global level,” explains Sridhar.

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