Indian premier institutes fall in QS’ graduate employability rankings
India’s higher education institutes, led by Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kharagpur, and Kanpur, have dropped in the latest QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) Graduate Employability Rankings 2018.
QS, a leading global network and information specialist in the higher education sector, has released the latest rankings providing key information on how successful students are at securing a top job after graduating from these institutes. As against last year when top 300 institutes were ranked, this year the QS’s list includes 495 universities from across the world.
Not only have four out of the eight Indian institutes seen a drop in their rankings, but the latest rankings have only two Indian representatives — IIT-Bombay and IIT-Delhi — on the top 200 list. The two institutes have, however, fallen to the 191-200 band from the 101-150 band last year.
IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Madras, too, showed a decline in their positions from the 81- 90 band and the 101-150 band to the 251-300 and 201-250 bands, respectively. IIT-Kanpur and University of Delhi, which were ranked in the 201+ band last year, are placed in the 301-500 and 201250 bands, respectively.
On the other hand, University of Mumbai and IISc Bengaluru, which did not make it to the top 300 graduate employability rankings last year, saw themselves being placed in the 201-250 and 301500 bands, respectively.
The QS Graduate Employability Rankings is designed to provide students globally with a tool to compare university performance in terms of graduate employability outcomes and prospects. The rankings give weightage to parameters like employer reputation (30 per cent), alumni outcomes (25 per cent), partnerships with employers per faculty (25 per cent), employer/student connections (10 per cent), and graduate employment rate (10 per cent).
“We introduced a minimal but significant recalibration of the weightings we use, aiming to reduce the reliance on selfreported figures and provide an enhanced normalisation mechanism for the results - necessary, given their global scale. The Alumni Outcomes indicator now carries a weighting of 25 per cent, while the Employer-Student Connections ratio has a reduced weight of 10 per cent. Additionally, the Employer Reputation index reflects the changes recently introduced in the 2018 QS World University Rankings, with the domestic component of the indicator receiving increased weight,” QS stated.