IISc in top-100 world university ranking list

India makes its debut in prestigious THE ranking

The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore,  has become the country’s first institution to enter the Times Higher Education’s list of top 100 global engineering and technology schools, released on Wednesday.

With the top 10 positions in the list being held by American schools like Stanford, CalTech and MIT, IISc was ranked 99th in the list.

The ranking agency published the top 100 list after surveying 695 engineering and tech schools in the world, 19 of which were from India.

“This year’s stand out success story has to be India, making its debut in this prestigious engineering and technology ranking, which represents the top few per cent of world universities for these subject disciplines,” Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings editor Phil Baty said.

An international ranking agency headquartered in London, Times Higher Education has been publishing the top 100 list of engineering and technology institutions since 2010.

“The IISc, Bengaluru, has made it to the world’s top 100 list for the first time since we’ve published this ranking,” Baty added. President Pranab Mukherjee recently complimented both IISc and Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi for making it to the QS’ top 200 world university ranking list in which IISc was ranked 147, and IIT-Delhi was positioned at 179.

“Whether you look at high tech sectors such as IT or aerospace engineering or more traditional fields such as steelmaking, India’s engineering and technology prowess is highly visible the world over in the shape of companies based in India or run by people born in India, such as Google, Microsoft, Infosys and Wipro or Tata and Mittal,” Baty said.

The domination of US institutions may look solid on top of the list, but the Times Higher Education list this year finds Asian institutions crawling up the list and making their presence.

While US institutions held 31 positions in the list , down from 34 last year, Asian institutions gained seven more positions from the 18 they held last year to 25 in 2015.

Asian schools were present in six of the top 30 spots with Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan and India improving their representations and those like Singapore and Hong Kong maintaining theirs, the head of communications at Times Higher Education Peter Sigrist said. “Like our flagship World University Rankings, Times Higher Education ranking for engineering and technology subjects applies rigorous standards, using tough global benchmarks across all of a global research university’s key missions – teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook,” Baty said.

Although the table uses the same range of 13 performance indicators, they have been carefully recalibrated to fit the research culture in this subject, he added.