Govt takes step to put Indian institutes on global list

With Indian academic institutes failing to figure in the global ranking list, government has proposed appointment of nodal professors to coordinate with international ranking agencies to help place the country's institutes among the best.
The move initiated by the HRD Ministry comes amid widespread perception that Indian institutes failed to find a place among the best due to lack of data available with ranking bodies such as Times Higher Eduction and QS World University Ranking.
Higher Education Secretary Ashok Thakur said a workshop would be conducted soon where a set of guidelines would be finalised for the nodal persons to take into consideration while providing the relevant data to the ranking bodies.

Times Higher Education, he said, has also decided to release an India specific ranking list.
So far, none of the Indian institutes feature among the top 100 in the world ranking. Panjab University is the highest ranked Indian institution clubbed in the group of universities ranked between 226-250 ranks by Times.
Absence of Indian institute in the list of the elite group has often been highlighted by President Pranab Mukherjee among others.

After the matter was raised in the IIT council meeting, some of these institutes decided to set up committees individually to engage with the ranking agencies to figure in the ranking list.

Talking about admission to IITs and NITs, Thakur said a joint council would be conducted for both these institutes this year and the matter would be discussed in the coming meetings with these institutes.
He, however, ruled out in tweaking the top 20 percentile criterion that the IITs have fixed as one of the eligibility criteria after the two-tier format for selecting candidates was put in place last year.