Can IITs make it to the top global league?

It's a problem that has been flagged from time to time. Back in 2011, Infosys Chief Mentor NR Narayana Murthy rued about the broad decline in the academic standards at IITs, or the Indian Institutes of Technology. Murthy lamented that the lack of focus on research was taking away IITs distinctive appeal and turning them into just another teaching institutions in the country. "We all know it is not the way to go about it," he said.

A year later, IITs failed to make it to the top 200 institutions in Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings that was released in September. Since then, IITs have been consistent in their absence from global ranking lists, with the most recent being the Times World University Reputation rankings.

What has changed, however, is IITs attitude towards this problem. Instead of being dismissive about their absence from ranking lists, they are now actively looking at remedies to make their presence felt on the world stage.

"As academicians, we have only believed in doing our work well and have never paid attention to making ourselves more visible. We have now realised that we need to create more visibility for our research and development initiatives and our research programmes," says an IIT director who was part of a committee set up by the Union ministry of human resource development to look into ways to boost IITs international ranking.

One problem coming in the way of IITs international glory is the number of citations of its research papers in peer reviewed journals. The more the number of citations, the better the chances of a higher academic ranking. The frequency of publication matters as it helps gauge the influence a research paper or an article has on the rest of the world. For IITs this has been a sore point.

"Going by the number of citations we generate, it is unlikely that any of the Indian institutions will figure in the top 100 in the next 10 years unless we change our strategy, mindset and focus," says M K Surappa, professor and director, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar (Punjab). Surappa, who presented a paper on IITs ranking to the President of India last year, says the gap on citations between Indian institutes and the global best like Massachusetts Institute of Technology is only growing wider. On an average, citations per publications for IITs and the Indian Institute of Science has grown from five to six earlier to eight now. In contrast average citations for MIT has increased from 22 to over 30 now. (See table)

"Impactful research papers will do the trick here. We are producing a large number of papers but not creating much impact. We need new ideas to be reflected in these papers," says Surappa. For better citation numbers, IITs should also look at promoting their work by participating in international conferences, says another IIT director who does not want to be named.

As things stand today, India does not have a single institution with enough research prowess to make it to global university surveys. To Phil Baty, editor for the Times Higher Education Rankings, India's absence is a matter of concern, especially as all other BRIC nations have at least one university in the Times World University Reputation rankings.

Apart from boosting the number of citations, IITs also need to pay more attention to working with industry in order to take their research to the real world. Currently, not much is happening on this front. Creating a world-class infrastructure and research facility to attract foreign faculty and students is another aspect that requires attention.

A large part of IITs problem stems from the financial pressures it is facing. IITs raised their tuition fees from Rs 50,000 for the full year to Rs 90,000 last academic session. Still, that covers just a fourth of the Rs 3.5 lakh that they spend on a student in a year. "We have a responsibility as public institutions. We cannot expect student fees to take care of the entire expense," says the IIT director mentioned above.

But it is not all gloom and doom for IITs. Despite over 40 per cent of its teaching posts lying vacant, they have one of the best faculty-student ratio at 1:15 in the country. Over the next five years, the ratio is expected to improve further as IITs are working on a plan to train more PhDs to make faculty shortage a thing of the past.