The climb to Global Top 50 for Indian universities

Indian education sector has witnessed pathbreaking reforms in recent years. The country has unveiled its ambitious National Education Policy that aims to radically change the way students learn. Several other changes including renaming Human Resource Development Ministry as Ministry of Education, improving standard of universities through National Institutional Ranking Framework, promoting online education, and an increased focus on research, point to India’s efforts at improving quality of education. University Grants Commission (UGC) has initiated reforms to facilitate and strengthen inclusive education.

India houses some of best institutions of international standards like the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Indian Institutes of Technology, and other competent centres of higher learning like University of Delhi, Central Universities, traditional state universities with potential for excellence, and emerging private universities. It is also home to well-known, subject-specific institutions like the Indian Institutes of Management. Their global rankings have improved owing to concerted efforts of the government. These institutions, which are funded by the Government of India, boast of infrastructure on par with global standards.

The question now is how to transform India’s universities to be in the top 100 or 50 globally. Professionalism coupled with setting time-bound strategic goals by individual institution concerned hold the key. More importantly, they need to strive to improve key indicators that determine world ranking: employer reputation, international student and faculty ratio, citations per faculty, academic reputation, faculty-student ratio and so on.

Imbibing higher professionalism implies teaching pedagogy of international standards. One way to achieve it is to follow UGC’s recent suggestion of involving subject experts and successful international practitioners as faculty.

Employer reputation is a measure how a university moulds its students for successful careers. Students need employment after graduation, which the concerned university can facilitate by understanding employers’ requirements, and then incorporating the required skill-set in the institution’s curriculum. A unit comprising of teachers and students, set up specifically for networking with key employers, should form an essential component of individual departments. The yearly recruitment statistics also needs wide dissemination.

Academic reputation -- another component with key weightage in the overall rankings -- has two components: teaching and research quality. Teaching quality requires independent evaluation by professional agencies as is done internationally.

Citations per faculty measures the research quality of an institution. Recently, IISc was ranked as the world’s top university in ‘citations’. India’ top universities could replicate IISc’s strategy. India has a comparatively smaller number of researchers compared to China, US and others.

Faculty-student ratio is another key indicator in international rankings. UGC has recently specified 1:10 and 1:25 faculty-student ratios for post graduate and under graduate courses respectively. The ‘Research Assistants’ concept in international universities could be replicated in India’s top institutions.

International student-faculty ratio is a major component deciding world rankings. Students are the best ambassadors for improving university rankings and high proportion of international students improves its reputation globally. For attracting international students, the faculty composition should essentially incorporate international experts for which doors may be opened for international recruitment/lateral
entry. These international experts who may be part of professional ranking agencies may enable university’s global recognition, inculcating its global awareness and outlook.

The fast-track educational reforms being undertaken by the Government , with improvement in global indicators, may place India among the top.

(The writer is Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Finance)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)