Editorial: A pipe dream for Indian Universities

The fact that no Indian university figures in the global top 100 in QS World University Rankings is yet another reminder of the ills plaguing higher education

India cannot expect to emerge as the much-touted ‘Vishwaguru’ if the country’s universities continue to fare poorly in global rankings. None of the Indian universities figures in the global top 100 institutions and only three institutions find a place among the top 200. The QS World University Rankings 2022, released recently, comes as yet another reminder of the ills plaguing India’s higher education sector. This is for the fifth year straight that IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, are the only three Indian universities that bagged a spot among the top 200. QS, a higher education think tank, ranked 1,300 universities this year, which is their largest pool till date. In the total list, 35 Indian universities were ranked, with only 22 in the top 1,000, 3 in the top 200, and none in the top 100. With absolutely no improvement in the country’s standing year after year, it is high time policymakers did some serious introspection on the initiatives needed to improve the academic and research standards in our universities. The fact that none found a place among the top 250 list in terms of faculty-student ratio illustrates one of the fundamental problems confronting our higher education sector. This is despite the tall claims about the strength and vastness of human resources in the country. Though India has over 1,000 universities, including Central, State, deemed, private universities and Institutes of National Importance, the academic and research standards are not up to the international standards.

While the desired levels of research and internationalisation of Indian campuses remain weak points, the higher education sector also suffers from funds crunch, and its largely linear model with little focus on specialisation and innovation. It must find ways of increasing teaching capacity and attracting more talented students and faculty from across the world to study in India to improve its global standing. Educational experts have been calling for a drastic overhaul of the system to bring it on a par with global standards. There are a few pockets of excellence within the Indian system that need to be nurtured. In QS World University Rankings, the institutes are evaluated on six metrics, including academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty and international faculty/student ratio. It is now clear that the ‘Study in India’ initiative by the Centre to attract students and teaching faculty from overseas has not yielded desired results. A plethora of factors, including lack of quality teaching and research, poor infrastructure, outdated curriculum, continued focus on rote learning, poor synergy between universities and industry and lack of genuine autonomy, has been preventing the higher education sector from unleashing its full potential.

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