A bright idea from India

Has someone in India been reading this blog?


In a previous post I suggested that universities might improve their scores in the world rankings by merging. That would help in the QS and THE reputation surveys and the publications indicator in the Shanghai rankings.


If he is being reported correctly, Indian education minister Ashok Thakur proposes to go a step further and suggests that all the Indian Institutes of Technology should be assessed together by the international rankers, although presumably continuing to function separately in other respects. According to outlookindia:

"All the 13 IITs may compete as a single unit at the global level for a place among the best in the global ranking list.

Giving an indication in this regard, Higher Education Secretary Ashok Thakur said the idea is to position the IITs as a single unit much like the IIT brand which has become an entity in itself for finding a place among the top three best institutes the world-over.

International ranking agencies such as Times Higher Education and QS World University Ranking would be informed accordingly, he said.

Central universities and other institutes could follow on how the IITs position themselves in the ranking list, he said."

Both QS and THE seem eager to do business in India but this is surely a non-starter. Apart from anything else, it could be followed by all the University of California and other US state university campuses, branches of the National University of Ireland and the Indian Institutes of Science and Management coming together for ranking purposes.


Also, the Secretary should consider that if any IIT  follows the lead of Panjab University and joins the Hadron Collider Project or any other multi-contributor, multi-citation project, any gain in the THE citations indicator would be lost if it had to be shared with the other 12 institutes.