India’s universities fared badly in new “world university rankings”

India’s higher education institutions fared very badly in the new “World University Rankings 2011-12” brought out by the London weekly "Times Higher Education" (THE).

Only one educational institute of India, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), appeared on this list of world’s top 400 universities and that too at the lowly 317th position.

Indo-American statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, stressed that India needed to bring back the educational glory of ancient period like universities of Taxila, Nalanda, Sarnath, Amaravati, Banaras, Kanchi and Ujjain; and medieval period like Odantapura (745 CE), Vikramasila (810 CE), Somapura (480 CE), and Jagaddala (1090 CE).

Rajan Zed, who is chairperson of Indo-American Leadership Confederation, pointed out that tradition of education in India had been deep rooted. India needed to pump more funding into higher education and undertake some serious education reforms to compete at world level.

California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in USA, with an overall score 94.8, topped this list, followed in descending order by Harvard University (USA), Stanford University (USA), University of Oxford (UK), Princeton University (USA), University of Cambridge (UK), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Imperial College London (UK), University of Chicago (USA), University of California Berkeley (USA), etc.

Even some universities in Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Brazil, Turkey, and Egypt ranked higher than India’s only entry IITB.

USA dominated these rankings with seven of its universities placed in the top ten and 75 in the top 200. Caltech in Pasadena, whose traces go back to 1891, boasts of 32 Nobel prizes, and its alumni include Intel cofounder Gordon E. Moore, film director Frank Capra, and former Iceland prime minister Steingrimur Hermannsson.

Claimed to be the “gold standard in international university performance comparisons”, these rankings were developed by THE in concert with Thomson Reuters and with expert input from more than 50 leading figures in the sector from 15 countries across every continent, and employed 13 separate performance indicators. Published by TSL Education Ltd and edited by Ann Mroz, THE was founded in 1971.

----India News blast report