Indian institutes do not feature in World Reputation Rankings

Institutes from other BRIC nations find mention on the list of 100 most prestigious global universities

Indian institutes of higher learning do not feature anywhere in the Top 100 World Reputation Rankings 2015 by Times Higher Education magazine. All other countries from BRIC, including Brazil, Russia and China, have a representative in the list. Last year, too, India was the only BRIC nation to not have any institute on the list.

Harvard University, US, remained the number one in the World Reputation Rankings. The UK's University of Cambridge (second) and University of Oxford (third) displaced the US' Massachusetts Institute of Technology (fourth) and Stanford University (fifth). In Asia, Japan's University of Tokyo (12th) lead the region's charge in the global reputation league.

Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education Rankings, said, "It is really a matter of concern that a country of great intellectual history, and its huge and growing economic power, does not have a single university that is regarded by academics globally as being among the world's most prestigious."

The US took eight of the top 10 positions and 43 of the top 100 (down from 46 last year).

The World Reputation Rankings 2015 is a list of the 100 most prestigious global universities, based on the world's largest invitation-only survey of senior academic opinion.

Asia's number one performer is the University of Tokyo in 12th (although it has dropped one place). China has gained ground. Its top institution, Tsinghua University, has risen 10 places to 26th, overtaking Kyoto for the first time in the rankings. Peking University also performs well, moving up nine places to 32nd. Another BRIC to scale the table is Brazil: Its flagship, the University of São Paulo, has jumped from the 81-90 group to the 51-60 band. However, India has yet to break its duck in reputation terms, despite progress in other Times Higher Education rankings.

Baty said highly regarded global universities act as a magnet for international talent, and can draw in funding and investment and strategic partnerships, so they can really help power future economic and intellectual growth. "Brazil, Russia and China, the other great 'BRIC' nations, all have at least one top 100 university in the list. It is time India gave more support to its leading universities to ensure they can compete on a world stage," he said.

The World Reputation Rankings results are based on a global invitation-only opinion poll carried out in partnership with Elsevier, a leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The poll has attracted almost 70,000 responses from more than 150 countries in five annual rounds since the first survey in 2010. The 2015 results were drawn from 10,507 survey responses from published senior academics who on an average had worked in higher education for 15 years.