Look beyond rankings for fostering partnerships say experts

The absence of Indian universities in different international rankings has long been a point of debate. While a section of the academia believes that Indian institutes are not good enough to make the cut, others question the parameters of the rankings, which they argue are heavily skewed against Indian universities. So it came as a surprise when Panjab University featured among the top 250 in the Times Higher Education rankings this year.

According to Karthick Sridhar, vice chair, Indian Centre for Assessment & Accreditation, “Two faculty members of the University were part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) team of around 1200 scientists. So each citation of the LHC paper in turn became a citation for each scientist leading to international recognition,” he said, adding that citations are an important yardstick to determine rankings and were responsible for Panjab University's improvement in ranking. 

This rankings debate formed a major plank of the conference held between Australian and Indian educators at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Institute. Since the goal of the conference was to promote better partnerships between institutes of the two countries, Indian panellists stressed on the need to look at universities across the breadth of the country and not just focus on IITs and IIMs. “India is not just about Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Madras. It is much more than that,” said Mukti Mishra, president, Centurion University, Bhubaneshwar who added that it was indeed difficult to work towards partnerships amidst the complex institutional and regulatory structure. He pointed out to one important similarity between the two countries, “Nothing is institutionalised, everything is individualised; for instance if the vice chancellor of a university changes, so does everything else,” Mishra said. Ambarish Datta, managing director, BSE Institute agreed. “We once tried to set up a MoU with a national university but the entire process went haywire as soon as the vice chancellor changed.” 

From the Australian point of view, Julia Shelly, senior regional manager, University of Western Sydney, agreed with Mishra’s point of looking beyond the well worn path. However, she also elucidated certain difficulties that Australian universities faced. “Sometimes our activities are a little constrained by the qualifications framework in Australia and also classification bases of the National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition,” she said. She explained that it was necessary for Australian institutes to partner with Indian universities whose degrees had the necessary recognition. “Things keep going up and down in these collaboration processes. You have to be there for the long haul in order to build relationships,” she added. 

Another point discussed was the lack of an elaborate grading system of Indian universities and how it was harming the country’s interests. “In India, there are 42 universities which are not allowed to give degrees but continue to do so. About 34 of them have been given a clean shit by one of the regulatory bodies but the Supreme Court has told them to discontinue the courses,” said Sridhar adding that in all probability some of these institutions have international affiliations too. However, irrespective of the ranking parameters, the lack of quality research remains a stumbling block for Indian institutions. “Between 2003-2013, China has produced around 3.4 million research papers listed on Scopus (database of peer-reviewed literature). During the same time frame, India has not even produced a million papers,” he added. According to Datta, in India, there is a huge disconnect as far as research is concerned. “By the time the academic researchers finish their work, they often realise that the market has moved ahead by ages,” he said.  

While there was general agreement that ratings should not be used as a benchmark for partnerships, the need to come up with an alternative was expressed since students, parents and even employers attach a significant amount of importance to rankings. Also, according to Datta, Australian Universities must look to build real collaboration with Indian counterparts and not look at India just as an opportunity. “As far as possible, international delegations must look to visit universities across the country. It will certainly help in broadening their perspective,” he signed off.