With more than 500 universities, India is producing lakhs of professional graduates every year. We feel privileged to have world-class institutes like IITs and IIMs.
What is equally true is that the so called prestigious institutes of India are performing below the standards when compared to the other universities across the world. Major issues with our universities are short of qualified faculty, poor quality research, discordance between university research and industry requirement, etc.
Times Higher Education (THE), a publisher of annual survey of universities across the world has released the 2012-13 annual assessment of top universities. This year, for the first time ever, it ranked universities at Asia-level. The analysis was based on 13 parameters like teaching, knowledge transfer, research, diversity of campus in terms of academic collaboration with international colleagues, etc.
It is surprising to see that not even a single Indian university is in the top 10 positions in any of the lists. Among the Top Asian universities, only three Indian universities got listed, namely IIT Khargpur (30th position), IIT Bombay (33rd) and IIT Roorkee (56th). While other Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan, China and Korea are having 22, 17, 15 and 14 universities respectively on the list, India has, only 3!
The position of Indian universities in the world’s Top 400 universities list is also worst. Only two Indian universities – IIT Bombay (was between 251-275 ranks) and IIT Roorkee (was between 351-400 ranks) were on the list.
| Top 10 Universities in Asia | |||
| Rank | University | Location | Overall Score |
| 1 | University of Tokyo | Japan | 78.3 |
| 2 | National University of Singapore | Singapore | 77.5 |
| 3 | The University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong | 75.6 |
| 4 | Peking University | China | 70.7 |
| 5 | Pohang University of Science and Technology | Republic of Korea | 69.4 |
| 6 | Tsinghua University | China | 67.1 |
| 7 | Kyoto University | Japan | 66.8 |
| 8 | Seoul National University | Republic of Korea | 65.9 |
| 9 | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | Hong Kong | 64.4 |
| 10 | Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology | Republic of Korea | 64 |
| Indian Institutes | |||
| 30 | Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur | India | 41.6 |
| 33 | Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay | India | 40.6 |
| 56 | Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee | India | 29.9 |
According to the report, the shortage of qualified faculty and the reduced spending per student with the increase in number of students has affected the standards of higher education in India. It was also mentioned that there is a lack of collaboration between the university research and the research & development in industry.
The disturbing fact is that not even a single university from India has made to the top list. The institutes in the list are technology colleges rather than universities.
The report suggested that India needs to improve the quality of research and to build a world-class academy. It must develop a group of multi-disciplinary research universities capable of doing world-class research in various disciplinary and inter-disciplinary areas.
As good quality education and research plays a crucial role in improving the economy of any nation, our universities need to work on improving their research standards to meet the demands of the country.