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Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, has debuted in the QS University Rankings: Asia 2015 by bagging the 34th spot, which is also the top slot for India. Last year, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, was at the top from India at the 38th spot.
The top institution from Asia is National University of Singapore. Hong Kong University took the second spot, while Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology took the third position. Further, three of the top 20 and 25 of the top 100 are mainland Chinese universities, with about 70 getting featured in the ranking.
In India, by contrast, only 17 universities reached the top 300 and only three among them occupy higher positions than in 2014. There is no Indian institution in the top 30, although three appear in the top 50 and nine in the top 100. Panjab University, which was in the 171-180 position in 2014, has now dropped to 201-250 position.
"The main bright spot for India in the new publication is the performance of the Indian Institute of Science, which can be judged on a full set of data for the first time. It emerges as the country's leading representative, at 34th, and is fourth in Asia for the number of papers produced by each faculty member," said the QS rankings.
Established in 1909, the IISc has 3,300 students, most of them postgraduates. Its researchers were 11th in world rankings for the number of citations per paper in 2014, building on a stellar reputation in advanced computing, space science and nuclear technologies.
According to the rankings, Delhi remains the highest-placed Indian university in the QS University Rankings: Asia, at 91st. The University of Mumbai is closing the gap, having risen six places to 125th in the latest ranking. John O'Leary, member of the QS Advisory Board, said the drive for world-class institutions in India is a recent phenomenon, despite a distinguished record of research in a number of areas.
"The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have led the way - they account for seven of the country's top 10 institutions in the latest ranking - but neither they nor the leading universities have received funding on the scale enjoyed by their counterparts in China."
He added the first priority of successive governments, including the current one, has been to cater to the explosion in demand for higher education in India as the numbers of educated young people have risen.
He added that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukerjee have met QS delegations in the past year to discuss the performance of Indian institutions in international rankings.
The rankings showed that Delhi University is handicapped in ranking terms by large enrolments in its undergraduate colleges. The university has 200,000 students and is not in the top 300 for staffing levels, despite being rated top in Asia by employers. Other Indian universities' decline in the new ranking is mainly due to their performance in the surveys of academics and employers.
QS said more Indian universities are submitting data to QS and other ranking organisations, and there is a greater awareness of the measures that will be needed to achieve higher positions.
