What Times Higher Education Rankings 2020 indicate to us?

A little more than a day since the Times Higher Education Rankings of Universities around the World for 2020 Edition is released. And there are news articles in India already indicating that the new list is a mixed bag for India since there are no Indian Institution in the top 300, although the number of institutions represented in the list went up from 49 in the previous edition to 56 in the current edition.

For a summary of what the news has to offer:

• ToI points out that India is out of the Top 300

• Business Standard digs up history and says that such failure for India hasn’t happened since 2012

• FirstPost highlights that IISc slipped in its ranking

• LiveMint notes that one of the reasons cited by THE Rankings for IISc slipping is the dip in citation impact score (a parameter for assessing research quality)

• IndiaToday expresses surprise that IIT Ropar is No.1 among Indian Institutions

The picture for Indian Higher Education is not gory as some commentaries make out. Nor is there any confusion that such news headlines may permeate about the standard of education offered in India. On the other hand, an article by Times Higher Education themselves indicates that Indian Institutions are strong contenders. The explanation, for example, for the success of IIT Ropar in substantially improving its rank lies partly in their recruitment strategy-hiring competent researchers. Let us look at two statistics that may be relevant here.

First: There are 56 Institutions among 1396 Institutions that were covered by the current edition of Rankings. That is approximately 4-percent of Institutions. That also puts India at the 5th position in terms of overall representation on the Ranking List. Across 92 countries, if India could gather 4-percent then that is not a cause for concern, although there may be justified reasons and investments to aspire higher.

Second: There is another list released by Times called Young Universities Ranking that should be more relevant in the current scenario, given the rise in the number of private institutions over the past few decades. There are 351 Institutions globally represented in this list, among which 21 are Indian. That is approximately 6-percent of the total number on this list. To put the above statistics into perspective, on the World Rankings there are 3 US Institutions for each Indian Institution; whereas on the Young University Rankings list, there are 3 Indian Institutions for each US Institution. Goes to show that India is not falling behind, but actually racing forward. Skeptics could dig for more justification, but the first-hand evidence from these statistics cannot be ignored.