In March when the annual World University Rankings (WUR) league tables of the London-based rating agencies QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) and THE (Times Higher Education magazine) were released, there was palpable and pervasive despair and disappointment in India — in the media, politicians, government, academia, students, and the general public. Although the Indian subcontinent has a higher education tradition stretching back to the 5th century BCE when Nalanda University attracted scholars from around the world, not even one of India’s 693 universities — the three presidency universities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras established in 1857 included — made it into the Top 200 league tables of either rating agency. In the QS Top 200, IIT-Bombay is ranked #222, with the top-ranked by THE being the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (#276-300).
The continuously poor ratings of Indian universities have prompted some academics, scholars and politicians to downplay and dismiss the WUR league tables as inconsequential, irrelevant and inapplicable to our universities.
However, such sceptics are becoming a minority with even President Pranab Mukherjee and prime minister Narendra Modi voicing concern that our best higher ed institutions, exemplified by the globally-respected IITs, do not figure within the Top 100/200. The common excuse offered by apologists of the Indian academy is that the evaluation parameters and criteria of these offshore rating agencies are unsuited to the mission and/or educational philosophy of Indian higher ed institutions, which accord priority to social inclusion rather than developing meritocracies. Moreover we don’t produce a sufficient number of Ph Ds, teaching and research are not attractive for young professionals and R&D budgets are too small. Therefore, some influential academics argue in favour of designing a national ranking system in sync with the objectives, philosophy and strengths and weaknesses of Indian institutions of higher education.
This is spurious and disingenuous reasoning. Why does the nation experience pride and excitement when Saina Nehwal is ranked the world’s #1 badminton player? Or when India won the ODI (one-day internationals) ICC Cricket World Cup in 2011? Or when an Indian — even if settled abroad — wins the Nobel Prize, or when ISRO succeeds in launching a spacecraft to Mars? Likewise, if and when one of our universities is ranked within the global Top 100, it will generate pride within Indian academia and the country.
The plain truth is governments worldwide refer to the WUR to measure their academic global competitiveness. In Asia in particular, the QS, THE and even the Shanghai Jiao Tong WURs have sparked a ‘reputation race’, with universities and governments closely monitoring the criteria for assessing and ranking universities, and getting their acts together to improve the standing of their best universities in the BRICS and Asian universities league tables, if not in the WUR. In this respect China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea have achieved significant progress with several of their varsities ranked in the Top 200 and some even in the Top 100. Against this backdrop, the attitude of most Indian academics is negative, if not downright hostile. One IIT director disputed the findings, claiming his institute had not ‘participated’ in the rankings!
Moreover, QS, THE and Shanghai Jiao Tong (SJT) WURs are increasingly being utilised by India and several other countries (Russia, for example) for approving transnational academic collaborations. For instance our own University Grants Commission (UGC) has prescribed that foreign partner institutions of Indian universities must be ranked among the Top 500 of the THE and Shanghai Jiao Tong WUR league tables. The Russian government has recently enacted legislation which restricts recognition of foreign degrees to certification issued by Top 300 QS, THE or SJT universities.
In this connection, it’s pertinent to reflect upon India’s global standing in engineering education. The Delhi-based National Board of Accreditation (NBA), which assesses and evaluates post-secondary institutes of engineering education, has recently (June 2014) been accepted as a permanent signatory of the Washington Accord, an international non-governmental agreement on the substantial equivalence of national accreditation systems. Currently, there are 17 permanent signatories, and five provisional members waiting to be accorded permanent signatory status. But NBA’s membership of the Washington Accord is qualified. Only its accreditation of Tier I autonomous colleges and universities (10 percent of the total number of about 4,000 engineering colleges/universities) will be recognised by member-nations of the accord after accreditation by NBA as a Tier I institution.
Quite clearly, there’s widespread skepticism about the quality of education being dispensed by India’s institutions of higher education. To allay this suspicion, India’s universities need to improve their standing in the WURs before the Indian academy and nation can win the respect of the global community as a knowledge economy and society.
(Dr. R. Natarajan is former chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and former director, IIT-Madras)