Page 44 - EW 1-156 May 2024

Cover Story

A LTHOUGH LEARNED IIT-Guwahati (601-800). None of In- three within the Top 200. Moreover,

several other Asian universities are
dia’s pioneer metropolitan universi-
professors and aca-
demics in their ivory
ranked well above IIT-Bombay,
ties in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras
towers seem oblivious
the global Top 200 by either agency.
and hold themselves established in 1857 are ranked among top-ranked by QS (#149) and IISc
(201-250) by THE. Among them:
blameless, there’s It’s noteworthy that all the above NUS, Singapore at #8 by QS and #19
much that’s wrong with post-inde- are public — established by govern- by THE, KAIST, South Korea at #56
pendence India’s socialist-template ment — universities. Private universi- by QS and even University of Malaya
higher education system. ties haven’t fared better. BITS-Pilani at #65 by QS.
The poor condition of the Indian (estb.1964), routinely ranked India’s When asked to explain this
economy — GDP $4 trillion (cf. #1 private engineering university by phenomenon, the response of Indian
USA’s $23 trillion and China’s EducationWorld, is ranked in the academics is usual Indian excep-
$17 trillion); 40 million ‘educated’ 801-1000 band by THE. tionalism. Foreign ranking agen-
unemployed; low factory and farm Perhaps the new crop of private cies accord too much importance to
productivity, rock-bottom per capita universities established in the new research and not enough to teach-
income of $2,064 (cf. USA’s $76,000 millennium are too young to merit ing; too much weightage to number
and China’s $12,720) — is intimately respectable global rankings. The new of foreign faculty and students; no
connected with the country’s mori- genre O.P. Jindal Global University, weightage is accorded to inclusivity
bund higher education system. Sonipat (JGU, estb.2009) “made his- (reservations) and affordability. But
News of any earth-shattering tory” when it was ranked among the over the years, these excuses for the
or game-changing invention (the global 750 by QS in 2022 and deduc- status quo and resistance to reform,
internet, smartphone, electric car, tively, India’s #1 private university. have worn thin.
green energy etc) emerging from the But it is ranked in the 951-1000 band It’s time to acknowledge that low
shady bowers of Indian academia is in QS World University Rankings rates of economic growth, poor farm,
rare if not non-existent. Yet taxpay- 2024. factory and administrative productiv-
ers make heavy annual contributions The poor rankings of India’s most ity, are all outcomes of a substandard
to sustain India’s sputtering public admired universities in respected K-12 education system, low grade
higher education institutions. In the international academic league tables higher education institutions, espe-
Union budget 2024-25, an allocation is made more painful by the high cially universities. The plain truth is
of Rs.47,619 crore has been made for rankings of Asia’s best universities, that India’s 1,168 universities, several
public higher education. and mainland China in particular. of which were established over a
The poor condition of India’s Five Chinese universities (Ts- century ago, haven’t produced any
universities is reflected in the annual inghua, Peking, Fudan, Shanghai meaningful innovations and inven-
global ranking league tables of the Jiao Tong and Zhejiang) are ranked tions for 75 years. Smug academics
highly reputed London-based aca- among the QS Top 100 and another — big fish in small ponds — seem un-
demia ranking agencies Quacquarelli IIT-Bombay: #149 in QS World University Rankings 2024
Symonds (QS) and Times Higher
Education (THE). In the QS World
Rankings 2024 which evaluates 1,559
universities across 104 countries,
only two of India’s 1,168 universities
— IIT-Bombay at #149 and IIT-Delhi
#197 — are ranked among the global
Top 200. The much trumpeted In-
dian Institute of Science, Bangalore
(IISc, estb.1908) is ranked #225.
In the THE World University
Rankings (WUR) 2024 which as-
sessed 1,906 universities in 108
countries, Indian universities have
fared worse. India’s top-ranked
university is the Indian Institute of
Science, Bangalore, ranked in the
201-250 band, followed by Anna
University, Chennai (501-600) and

44 EDUCATIONWORLD MAY 2024