After ranking, reputation of Indian institutes takes a beating

IITs & IISc do not figure in the latest Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings

Don't want to miss the best from Business Standard?

A better world ranking is not the only aspect the leading higher education institutes in the country - Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) - need to work on. It appears, they need to up their international reputation, too.

In the latest World Reputation Rankings 2014 by Times Higher Education (THE) magazine for the top 100 prestigious universities, India is the only BRIC nation absent from the list. It needs to be mentioned that unlike global university rankings, THE's World Reputation Rankings 2014 takes into account an institute's global repute in the academic arena.

"A university's reputation for academic excellence is absolutely vital to its success: it drives student and faculty recruitment, international research partnerships, and helps to attract philanthropy and industrial investment. And while reputation is based on subjective opinion, in this case it is the informed, expert opinion of those in the know: experienced scholars from around the world," said Phil Baty, editor of Times Higher Education Rankings.

WHERE INDIAN INSTITUTES STAND

WORLD REPUTATION RANKINGS 2013 (TOP 5)

• Harvard University, US
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US
• University of Cambridge, UK
• University of Oxford, UK
• University of California, Berkeley

WORLD REPUTATION RANKINGS 2014 (TOP 5)

• Harvard University, US
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US
• Stanford University, US
• University of Cambridge, UK
• University of Oxford, UK

The Times Higher Education's World Reputation Rankings 2014 saw Harvard University taking the first place, followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, University of Cambridge and University of Oxford being ranked second, third, fourth and fifth, respectively. In the Asia-Pacific region, Australia loses ground with now five top 100 representatives in 2014, down from six in 2013.

The rankings come at a time when a committee set up by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to look into the international positioning of the IITs is in the process of submitting its report. The IITs had earlier acknowledged it was the lack of visibility at the right global forums that kept them out of international rankings.

While Times Higher Education Rankings does not rank institutions below 100, it has revealed that the Indian Institute of Science continues to be the most highly rated university in India, though it has seen its position drop from around 130th place to just below 200 in the world. IIT Bombay has also dropped to the 210-220 group, while IIT, Delhi and IIT, Kanpur both now feature just below 250th position in the world.

Among the BRIC nations, while India is the only one which does not have a university in the world top 100, mainland China has two, both in the top 50, followed by Russia and Brazil with one each.

The IITs admitted they were only looking at building on their global perception now.

"Our strength as IITs is engineering and we are fundamentally technology institutes. Hence, comparison with universities such as Stanford is not right. However, in terms of perception, it will take a while to build global reputation. We will be looking at improving our perception for the first time but our ranking will improve in near future," said a director of one of the older IITs.

Narayanan Ramaswamy, partner and head of education practice at KPMG explained that the bad performance of Indian institutes in international reputation rankings could be attributed to lack of interest and willingness to share data. "Institutes which appear in these rankings have shown a keen interest in giving correct and relevant data for the same. This may not be true of Indian educational institutions," he said.

Ramaswamy explained it would be wrong to assume that institutes like the IITs and IISc do not have international reputation. "Students from these institutes are spread across the globe. Hence, it would not be fair to say that they are not known globally," he added.

The director of another IIT explained that IIT alumni work for several Fortune 500 companies across the globe. Admitting that institutes like the IITs and IISc need to work on building their international presence by collaborations and publicising their courses abroad, he said it would not be difficult to catch-up on these rankings in the next 3-5 years.

In 2013, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) had taken the number one position in a new ranking of the top 10 Indian higher education institutions based on their global academic prestige.

Specialist institutes occupied the top five places in the Times Higher Education India Reputation Rankings, published for the first time in 2013 alongside the full Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had earlier said too many of our higher education institutions are simply not up to the mark. "Too many of them have simply not kept abreast with changes that have taken place in the world around us...(and are) still producing graduates in subjects that the job market no longer requires..."

Several Indian educational institutions, including the IITs in Mumbai, Delhi, Madras, Kanpur and Kharagpur, apart from Indian Institute of Science and Banaras Hindu University (BHU) featured in the recently released QS World University Rankings by Subject 2014 by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). While Indian institutes fared well in the engineering subjects, they lagged behind in arts and languages stream.