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Why Indian universities don't make it to world rankings

Last updated on: November 15, 2012 14:53 IST

Why Indian universities don't make it to world rankings


Barun Roy

While Indian universities stagnate, those in China are becoming engines of growth.

In the latest annual rankings of the world's 200 best universities, by Times Higher Education (THE) there's not a single Indian name.

Shocking? Then here's the surprise: 15 Asian universities figure in the same survey as the rising stars of global higher education -- two from China, three from South Korea, four from Japan, four from Hong Kong, one from Singapore, and one from Taiwan.



But it's China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), South Korea and Singapore that are making waves right now -- in particular, China and South Korea -- as they entrench their positions as the world's new destinations of excellence, Western domination of global higher education, still unquestioned, could begin to feel the pinch.


If, against these criteria, the National University of Singapore could occupy the 29th position in the 2012-13 survey, the University of Hong Kong the 35th, Peking and Tsinghua Universities in China the 46th and 52nd places, respectively, Seoul National University the 59th slot and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology the 68th, the future shouldn't be hard to read.

Even more remarkable is the strength of the determination to excel.


Where exactly does India stand? A year ago, India was nowhere even among the world's 300 best, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai had a presence in the 301-350 band.


There's a movement, yes, but still a very tentative one.

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Image: The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay was ranked 225 in the QS 2011-12 list of global universities
Photographs: Prateek Karandikar/Wikimedia Commons


China treats its universities and research institutes as 'engines of growth'

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What's the secret that the Chinese and the Koreans know and we don't?




South Korea, where the private sector accounts for almost 74 per cent of all R&D spending, has a funding programme called the "World-Class University Project" that encourages universities to establish new academic departments and host international scholars for collaborative research.

China treats its universities and research institutes as "engines of growth", expecting them to function as idea machines to serve specific industry needs.


IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and many other foreign firms have substantial collaborative arrangements with Chinese universities. China's own R&D spending, coursed mainly through its universities and research institutes, was up 23 per cent to $139.2 billion in 2011, which meant a steady rise of 20 per cent on average for the sixth straight year.

Until as late as 1993, exchanging students, swapping information, and attending international conferences were the primary modes of China's international academic collaboration.

Things began to change when a new law was introduced that year on the future of science and technology in the country. Beijing's Tsinghua University -- where this year's Nobel Prize co-winner in Chemistry, Brian Kobilka, is a guest professor -- reflects how this change is affecting Chinese academia.





Image: Since one of its professors won the Nobel, Beijing's Tsinghua University now enrols more international students.
Photographs: Emcc/Wikimedia Commons

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