Ladder of excellence: How great varsities ace the climb

Until the beginning of the 20th century, there were a few universities both in India and abroad. Their subjective evaluation of eminence was based largely on hearsay, students’ impression and alumni experience. In those days, there was no objective analysis of their status, nor was there a stiff competition to excel.

The current gradation of universities is different. There are now thousands of them across the world. We, in India, have about one thousand and the number keeps galloping to meet the phenomenal increase in demand. Considerable variation exists between universities in offering a spectrum of courses for graduate, post-graduate and doctorate studies and research. Prospective students and their educated parents are wary of the international ranking of a university as well as the academic credentials of its individual programme/department prior to taking a decision on admission. This segment of stakeholders wants to ensure that their heavy investments are cost-effective.

International rankings are not granted but earned by universities on the strength of their distinctive practices and performances. Of several agencies involved in evaluation, the Times Higher Education (THE) world rankings is considered the most reliable. For instance, in the 2021 survey, THE covered over 1,500 universities across 93 countries for scanning 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s accomplishments across four broad areas — teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

Based on the perusal of 80 million citations from 13 million research publications and responses from 22,000 scholars, THE prepared the list of rankings in which the University of Oxford (UK), Stanford University (USA) and Harvard University (USA) emerged as the first, second and third best universities, respectively, of the world.

Against this bewildering backdrop of eminence, here is a glimpse of the world’s three great universities to illustrate what it means to be a global leader or a brand name in higher education and research.

Oxford University: Oxford is supposed to have been established in (exact year not known) 1096 as the oldest varsity in Europe. It has no separate campus as its buildings are scattered in and around the city. In fact, it is a university as well as a city, just like Singapore is a city-nation. As on July 31, 2019, the university had 14,478 staff of whom more than 40% were from other countries. At that point of time, Oxford had 22,000 students from 140 countries. It has the oldest museum and the largest library of the world.

Until 2020, the university had 72 Nobel Laureates, three Fields Medallists and 160 Olympic champions. In 2019, the university’s income was £2.5 billion, with £625 million received as research grants. Oxford alumni include 26 prime ministers of the UK and many Heads of States including Bill Clinton and Indira Gandhi. It offers the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships. The university is indeed proud of its international character. It is astonishing that even after 900 years, it is in the forefront of research, as was recently justified by the production of Covishield vaccine in collaboration with AstraZeneca Pharma.

Stanford University: Founded in 1885 as a private university with a campus of 1,626 acres, Stanford University has seven Schools, three of which comprise 40 academic departments at undergraduate level. The other four run more than 90 graduate programmes in law, medicine, education and business. In 2019, the university had 17,249 students from more than 76 countries, 2,180 faculty and 18 institutes for inter and multidisciplinary studies and research. Its alumni and students have won until October, 2020, 84 Nobel prizes, eight Fields Medals and over 270 Olympic medals including 137 golds. It also produced about 17 astronauts.

The university’s alumni are known for entrepreneurship and have established multinational companies (MNCs) like Procter & Gamble, Yahoo and Google, yielding together an annual revenue exceeding $2.7 trillion. A large number of Fulbright, Marshall’s, Rhodes Scholars and US Congressmen have studied here. Its endowments exceed $25 billion and the annual budget is about $1.6 billion. The fact that former American president Bill Clinton, prior to demitting office, went to bid adieu to the president of Stanford University exemplifies its stature.

Harvard University: Established in 1836 as a private university, Harvard is the oldest such institution in the US. Its three campuses have a total area of 5,400 acres. It has 10 faculties with an Endowment of $42 billion. It has the largest library with 20.4 million collections. In 2019-18, there were 16,000 staff (2,409 professors) and 36,000 students from 80 countries. It has produced 161 Nobel awardees and 18 Fields Medallists. Harvard faculty and students have won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer prizes, 118 Olympic Medals (46 golds). Prominent alumni include many members of the US Congress, Macarthur Fellows, 375 Rhodes and Marshall’s Scholars and eight US presidents.

Its faculty and students have also founded (like those of Stanford University) many MNCs. More than 480,000 of its alumni spread over 210 countries include 32 Heads of States (in addition to those of the US), Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ratan Tata, Al Gore and Henry Kissinger.

The facts and figures mentioned above speak volumes of the distinctive accomplishments of the world’s top universities. They are academically robust, financially stable and managerially sound. Their research pursuits as well as teaching programmes are varied, vigorous and vibrant. Their reputation is not built on conjecture but from the visible uniqueness of a gamut of achievements in many fields, including athletics. The most striking and yet common feature of these ’jewels of higher learning and research’ is their large size and international outlook. In fact, the student faculty and alumni par excellence collectively contribute to their greatness.

We are currently witnessing a shift in education with the National Education Policy-2020 (NEP-2020). The central government is fully seized of the need for large multi-faculty and multi-disciplinary universities with international character — an ambience that we were supposed to have had in our prehistoric universities of Takshashila and Nalanda. A priori, a university should have faculty and facilities for innovative research. We have to wait for 10-15 years to witness the transformation envisioned by the NEP-2020.

(The writer is former Vice Chancellor, University of Mysore, and President, Forum of Former Vice Chancellors of Karnataka)