India’s pride gets rating rap

For all the talk, the country’s prestigious bodies of higher education like the IITs, Indian Institute of Science, IIMs and even the Jawaharlal Nehru University have, over the years, been slipping up on their global grades, finds DNA’s Josy Joseph

When the Financial Times, London, recently released its list of the world’s finest MBA institutes, none of the Indian Insitutes of Management (IIMs) made it to the list.

What’s more, last year not a single institute of higher education figured anywhere high up on any global ranking that mattered, barring perhaps the International School of Business. The latter, interestingly, is a private institution which is yet to be recognised by the government.

For all the talk, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), the Indian Institute of Science (IISC), the IIMs and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) have, over the years, been slipping on their global grades. Other universities in the country do not even figure on the radar of global ranking agencies.

The omission has however served as a wake-up call. IIM Ahmedabad hopes a host of initiatives implemented over the past five years would help it figure in the FT ranking by 2009.

And IIT Mumbai could soon have its first full-time foreign faculty. IIT Mumbai is carrying out an extensive review of all its departments, hoping to regain its place among the top technological universities of the world.

“Give us another 10 years, we will be among the top 10,” says IIT Mumbai’s dean (alumni and international relations) Professor Pradipta Banerji, admitting that they are acutely aware of the impact that global rankings would have on the branding of their institute.

IIT Mumbai was placed 33rd in the ranking of the world’s top universities for technology in the 2007 Times Higher Education World University Ranking, but they do not find mention in the world’s top 200 universities any more.

In 2004, the IITs were ranked 41st in the overall ranking of the world’s top universities, and were 3rd among the universities for technology. In the list of worlds’ best 200 universities, IITs dropped to 50th spot in 2005, in 2006 to 57th place, and in 2007 they just vanished from the overall ranking.

Banerji says the ranking in 2006 “was more hype than substance, this time it is realistic”. He adds every department of IIT Mumbai is undertaking intense review of the factors that could help the institute climb to the top.

Among other factors that would help the Powai-based institute to climb the ladder is foreign faculty — it has already received an application from a European for a position.

Explaining the reason for the IIT brand dropping in their assessment, the Times editors point out: “The Indian Institutes of Technology have also fallen out of the rankings this year for the first time, partly because we are now seeking opinion on each individual IIT, not on the IIT system as a whole.”

As the London Times ranking gets sophisticated and look deeper into individual IITs and other institutes, the situation is looking grimmer.

Until 2006, there used to be at least three — IITs, IIMs and Delhi’s JNU —among the world’s top 200 universities in the London Times Higher Education Supplement ranking. In 2007, there were none.

The story is not very different in other global rankings too.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities, compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Institute of Higher Education has been telling a similar tale. This ranking has an interesting formula that includes Nobel prizes won by faculty and students, citations in research articles, articles published in reputed publications etc.

In the Shanghai ranking of 500 universities in 2007, there are only two Indian institutions: IISC Bangalore and IIT-Kharagpur, which comes up in the 305 to 402 rank bandwith.

In Asia Pacific region, IISC Bangalore and IIT-Kharagpur are in the band of 43-64 positions. Four years ago, in 2003, while IISC Bangalore was in the 251-300 band, IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kharagpur were in the 451-500 band.

Similarly, in the major rankings of MBA institutes too, results have not been encouraging. The recently released FT top 100 MBA institutes list features just one Indian institute, that too the privately-run ISB Hyderabad, which is not even recognised by the All India Council for Technical Education.

The Economist ranks IIM-A at 92 in top 100 MBA institutes.

Even those who do not believe in these rankings much, are calling for urgent measures to improve the state of higher education in India. The National Knowledge Commission says India needs to break up its huge universities, significantly increase the number of universities to 1500 from today’s 350.

Appropriately reflecting the state of affairs in higher education in India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year said in Mumbai: “Almost two-third of our universities and 90% of our colleges are rated as below average on quality parameters.”

j_joseph@dnaindia.net