India and the World Rankings

There is an excellent article in Asian Scientist by Prof Pushkar of BITS Pilani that questions the developing obsession in India with getting into the top 100 or 200 of the world rankings.

Prof Pushkar observes that Indian universities have never done well in global rankings. He says:

"there is no doubt that Indian universities need to play ‘catch up’ in order to place more higher education institutions in the top 400 or 500 in the world. It is particularly confounding that a nation which has sent a successful mission to Mars does not boast of one single institution in the top 100. “Not even one!” sounds like a real downer. Whether one considers the country a wannabe “major” power or an “emerging” power (or not), it is still surprising that India’s universities do not make the grade." 

and

"It is also rather curious that the “lost decades” of India’s higher education – the 1980s and the 1990s – coincided with a period when the country registered high rates of economic growth. The neglect of higher education finally ended when the National Knowledge Commission drew attention to a “quiet crisis” in its 2006 report."

Even so: 

"(d)espite everything that is wrong with India’s higher education, there is no reason for panic about the absence of its universities in the top 100 or 200. Higher education experts agree that the world rankings of universities are limited in terms of what they measure. Chasing world rankings may do little to improve the overall quality of higher education in the country."

He also refers to the proposal that the Indian Institutes of Technology should combine just for the rankings. Apparently he has been in touch with Phil Baty of THE who is not buying the idea.

I would disagree with Professor Ashok's argument that combining universities would not be a good idea anyway because THE scales some indicators for size. That is true but the reputation survey is not scaled and adding votes in the survey would be beneficial  for a combined institution if one could be created and then accepted by the rankers . Also, you currently need 200 publications a year to be ranked by THE so there would be a case for smaller places around the world --although probably not the IITs -- banding together to get past this threshold.

Recent Research: Rankings Matter

According to an article by Molly Alter and Randall Reback in Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, universities in the USA get more applications if they receive high quality-of-life ratings and fewer if their peers are highly rated academically.


True for your school: How changing reputations alter demand for selective US colleges

Abstract

There is a comprehensive literature documenting how colleges’ tuition, financial aid packages, and academic reputations influence students’ application and enrollment decisions. Far less is known about how quality-of-life reputations and peer institutions’ reputations affect these decisions. This article investigates these issues using data from two prominent college guidebook series to measure changes in reputations. We use information published annually by the Princeton Review—the best-selling college guidebook that formally categorizes colleges based on both academic and quality-of-life indicators—and the U.S. News and World Report—the most famous rankings of U.S. undergraduate programs. Our findings suggest that changes in academic and quality-of-life reputations affect the number of applications received by a college and the academic competitiveness and geographic diversity of the ensuing incoming freshman class. Colleges receive fewer applications when peer universities earn high academic ratings. However, unfavorable quality-of-life ratings for peers are followed by decreases in the college’s own application pool and the academic competitiveness of its incoming class. This suggests that potential applicants often begin their search process by shopping for groups of colleges where non-pecuniary benefits may be relatively high.

Department of Remarkable Coincidences

On the day that QS published their top 50 under-50 universities, Times Higher Education has announced that it will be holding a Young Universities Summit in Miami in April at which the top 100 universities under 50 will be revealed.

Also, the summit will see "a consultative discussion on proposed new rankings metrics designed to better capture innovation in innovation and knowledge transfer in world rankings in the future."

Innovation?  What could that mean? Maybe counting patents.

Knowledge transfer? Could this mean doing something about the citations indicator? Has someone at THE seen who contributed to multi-author massively cited publications in 2012?

on proposed new rankings metrics designed to better capture innovation and knowledge transfer in world rankings in the future.on proposed new rankings metrics designed to better capture innovation and knowledge transfer in world rankings in the future.

a consultative discussion on proposed new rankings metrics designed to better capture innovation and knowledge transfer in world rankings in the future.a consultative discussion on proposed new rankings metrics designed to better capture innovation and knowledge transfer in world rankings in the future.

ll also host a consultative discussion on proposed new rankings metrics designed to better capture innovation and knowledge transfer in world rankings in the fu

QS Young Universities Rankings

QS have produced a ranking of universities founded in the last fifty years. It is based on data collected for last year's World University Rankings.

The top five are:

1.  Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
2.  Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
3.  Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
4.  City University of Hong Kong
5.  Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea

There are no universities from Russia or Mainland China on the list although there is one from Taiwan and another from Kazakhstan.

There are nine Australian universities in the top fifty.