Ranking of Indian Universities

The details of the report are at www.thetimeshighereducation.co.uk . There are several entities undertaking ranking of world universities as per their own criteria. Some of the better known global systems of rankings are the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) system, the Times Higher Education (THE), World University Rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

These different international ranking systems use different values, indices and parameters to rank higher educational institutions. These criteria are neither universally accepted nor recognized and are therefore sometimes subjected to criticism in academic circles. Some of these parameters may not be relevant for Indian higher educational institutions and therefore, these rankings cannot constitute the basis for benchmarking of Indian institutions.

Improvement of quality of higher education is a continuous process. The Government is continuously striving to improve the quality of higher education in the country by legislative initiatives as well as schemes and programmes. The National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2010, which aims to make accreditation mandatory for all higher educational institutions in order to ensure independent quality assurance mechanism, has been introduced in Parliament on 3rd May, 2010.

To facilitate dedicated Universities as hubs for research ecosystems to develop as clusters of education, research and innovation and to promote innovation in learning and design, development and delivery of solutions, the Universities for Research and Innovation Bill, 2012 has been introduced in the Lok Sabha on 21st May, 2012.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has reported that it implements various schemes for providing support to higher education institutions for improving quality of higher education, such as Universities with Potential for Excellence (UPE), Colleges with Potential for Excellence (CPE), Special Assistance Programme (SAP), Assistance for Strengthening of Infrastructure for Science and Technology (ASIST), “Assistance for Strengthening of Infrastructure for Humanities and Social Sciences” (ASIHSS), Basic Scientific Research (BSR) etc. The Department of Science and Technology, through its programme “Promotion of University Research and Scientific Excellence” (PURSE), Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE), Fund for Improvement of S&T Infrastructure in Higher Educational Institutions (FIST) etc. provides support to universities essentially for research man-power cost, augmentation of equipment and computational facilities, research consumables and maintenance of the facilities etc.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Dr. Shashi Tharoor in Rajya Sabha today on 7.12.12