In the 2023 edition of the QS World University Rankings, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru surpassed the IIT-Bombay and the IIT-Delhi, rising 31 positions in a single year.
It has been a pattern since 2017 that the only other Indian institutes in the top 200 worldwide league are both IIT-Bombay (IIT-B) and IIT-Delhi (IIT-D), both of which have increased five and eleven places to rank 172 and correspondingly. There are now 27 Indian universities among the world’s top 1,000.
One of the eight public Institutes of Eminence (IoE), QS spokesperson William Barbieri told The Indian Express that IISc’s impressive rise was due to improvements in four of the six metrics used to compile the rankings.
Academic reputation (AR), employer reputation (ER), faculty-to-student ratio (FSR), citations per faculty (CpF), and the ratio of international professors to international students are all included in this list of criteria to be considered.
IISc had an extraordinary year across QS measures, according to Barbieri. There has been no change year-on-year in its best metric—Citations Per Faculty—and it continues to be a world leader in this area. It is the improvements across QS’s other criteria to which it owes its excellent success. IISc has seen improvements in four out of six indicators, the most notable of which is a significant increase in the number of faculty members who are native speakers of another language. While academic and employer reputation and teaching capability have both improved significantly, IISc has now ascended to the pinnacle of India’s educational hierarchy.
A London-based higher education analytics business, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), has determined that IISc Bengaluru is the world’s best research institution when the number of professors is taken into account, with a perfect score of 100/100 for the CpF indicator. “Furthermore, IISc Bengaluru is the fastest rising South Asian university within the QS World University Rankings top-200,” claimed a QS release.
Across a wide range of important indicators, India’s educational institutions—of which 41 were included in the rankings—performed poorly. For example, the FSR indicator showed reductions at 30 of the 41 ranking universities, with only four showing gains.
On the bright side, there are two Indian universities currently in the top 250 for Faculty/Student Ratio, rather than just one in prior editions, which is positive.” For FSR, Savitribai Phule Pune University is ranked 225th, followed closely by the 235th-ranked O.P. Jindal Global University and the 276th-ranked IISc Bengaluru.
For the eleventh year in a row, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been ranked the world’s best university. Stanford University came in third, followed by the University of Cambridge. Of the top 500 colleges and universities worldwide, China has 28. Six of those are in the top 100, including Tsinghua University, which is ranked 12th, and Peking University, which is 14th.
All but one of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) that appear in the rankings have improved their position. Among the new entrants, IIT-Indore debuted at number 396 on the worldwide scale, while IIT-BHU debuted in the number 651-700 range.
As the survey reveals, India’s inclusion in the top 500 is also due to the IITs. For example, eight Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are placed among the world’s top 500 institutions. Five years after the scheme’s inception, no other Indian university – public or private – has earned a spot in this elite group.
Ten public and private Indian higher education institutions were aimed at breaking into the top 500 of reputable rankings like QS during the next decade, and into the top 100 “over time” under the IoE plan. In the absence of an empowered expert group, the plan continues to sputter.
As a group, five of the eight public IoEs ranked higher than they had in the previous year; the University of Delhi dropped from 501-510 to 521-530, and the University of Hyderabad went from 651-700 to 751-800.
The only other public IoE, Banaras Hindu University, has been ranked in the 1,001-1,200 range.
According to QS, one of the three private IoEs, OP Jindal Global University, is the best private university in India, with a ranking in the 651-700 range. Similar to the previous year, Manipal Academy of Higher Education and BITS-Pilani, the other two private IoEs, were assigned to the 751-800 and 1,001-1,200 bands.
Responses from 1,511,000 academics and 99,000 employers around the world formed the basis of this report.
Several Indian universities have improved their research footprint, which has had a favorable impact on their global image, according to Ben Sowter, Senior Vice President of QS. The Indian higher education industry appears to be struggling to supply appropriate teaching capacity,” according to our dataset.
Source: The Indian Express
