JOIN USEvery year when rankings of universities in the world are published, attention is drawn to the fact that no Indian university is placed in a respectable position in the list. This year also it is no different with no Indian institution of higher learning found among the top 100. The prestigious Times Higher Education rankings, published last week, had no representation from India among the world’ best. India’s top institutions figure only in the list of universities from emerging countries, that too very low down. Others like the OECD’s PISA and the QS rankings have also shown year after year that Indian universities do not make the grade. Countries like China and Brazil have their universities in the top hundred. They also improve their rankings every year. Two Chinese universities jumped 10 places this year, while those from India were slipping even from their low positions.
Excellence in education, especially technical education, is an essential requirement for development. India can realise its growth and development ambitions only if it improves its standards of education. It is well placed to do that with a large population which has the largest number of young people in the world. What is called democratic dividend will mean nothing if our schools, colleges and technical institutes cannot offer good education. Rankings are done on the basis of teaching standards, teacher-student ratios, teachers’ qualifications, research facilities and output, citations, spending per students and many other factors. Indian universities lag far behind the others in the world by these criteria. The response in the country is to criticise the ranking system and attribute commercial motives to it. It is also stated that universities like Harvard and Cambridge, which top the rankings, have reached their positions after hundreds of years of being in the field. But why do our institutions not improve after being in the field for many decades?
Inadequate investment and lack of commitment to excellence adversely affect all the elements which give a good university its ranking. Politicisation and mismanagement of the higher education system are other reasons. Heads of universities and premier technical institutions like the IITs are humiliated and even made to resign by political authorities who have no sense of education. Appointments are not based on the best norms. Even institutions at the highest level do not have the freedom of operation that they need to achieve excellence. Unless the problems that plague education from the primary school to the top level are addressed and resolved, we will only be stuck in the past.