UoH, only varsity from TS to get world rank
Number of Indian varsities in top 1,000 went up from 20 to 24 this year
IIT-Bombay, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru and IIT Delhi featured in the Top 200 universities of the QS World University rankings released on Wednesday.
The number of Indian universities in the top 1,000 went up from 20 to 24 this year, but several institutions have not applied for the rankings.
University of Hyderabad was the only university from Telangana state to secure a rank, and it improved its rank from last year from 601-650 to the top 59 per cent.
Academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty, studentto-faculty ratio, international faculty and international students are the parameters on which QS ranks universities.
Experts say many universities had not applied for the rankings due to lack of awareness and the costs involved. Government funding is restricted to payment of salaries in many universities.
While universities generate research work, that in itself is not enough. “What is more important is the quality of research publications in terms of the impact of journals where the papers are published and the number of citations,” said NITWarangal director Prof. N.V. Ramana Rao.
A few academics said the priorities of Indian universities were different.
Prof. K.V.S. Hari from IISC’s department of ECE said, “World rankings are based on many parameters based on international students, faculty etc. I think Indian rankings are more relevant for Indian institutions as of now. Once Indian institutions understand how the international rankings are done they will also provide enough data.”
He said, “Many times what we observe is our universities and institutions fail to provide enough data due to which they fail to secure world rankings. There are many good institutes in our country.”
“Once they realise what is required for the world rankings they will provide the data,” he said.
Osmania University Vice-Chancellor Prof. S. Ramachandram said, “We figure in many international rankings but then our issues are different because we deal with a number of affiliated colleges which is not a parameter for the QS rankings.’’
He said funds to apply for world rankings was also an issue. “We have spend about `5 lakh to `6 lakh, which is quite huge. We don’t apply for rankings where we have to pay because we don’t have funds to spare.”
He said the university was planning to make a separate provision for the Budget to apply for the rankings.
Speaking about the UoH ranking, Vice-Chancellor Prof. Appa Rao Podile said, “at 300 globally, the citations per faculty indicator is the strongest for University of Hyderabad. As per QS, 3,612 research papers have been published by the faculty between 2011-2016 and they have a total of 23,535 citations.”
He said the university had performed exceptionally well both in India and at the global level in the citations per faculty indicator as well as in faculty student ratio.
“At the global level UoH had a score of 58.1 to the global median of 34.1 in citations per faculty criteria. It has a score of 8.8 to the global median of 8.0 in the faculty-students ratio. Our goal is to not only improve our ranking in India but also be among the world’s best institutions,’’ he said.