IIT-Bombay tops first QS ranking for Indian universities, IISc second

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Mumbai and Madras and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru have emerged as top three in the first standalone QS ranking of India’s higher education institutes.

Interestingly, while IISc was India’s best institution in the QS World University Rankings released earlier this year, the domestic league has pegged IIT-Bombay at number one. IISc ranks second and IIT-Madras third. The table reflects country’s top 75 institutions. Explaining the variance in performance of Indian institutions in the domestic and international tables, Simona Bizzozero, Communications Director at QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), a British company specialising in education, told The Indian Express from London that the ranking criteria for both was different.

“Performance criteria used for the Indian University Rankings is the same as we use for the QS BRICS Ranking. In the global tables, academic reputation carries 40 per cent weightage, in the Indian edition it carries 30 per cent. The World University Rankings focus on research impact (citations per faculty) and the domestic league looks at research productivity (number of papers per faculty),” she said. The India University Rankings is the second country-specific rankings done by QS, after it released one for China on October 10.

According to Bizzozero, the Indian tables will be followed by ones for Japan and South Korea. “Countries like India and China are important for us because of the sheer number of domestic and foreign students. It makes sense for us to start domestic tables for the largest student markets. The India University Rankings look at the Indian university system with an international lens. The institutions ranked in this table are those that have appeared in our BRICS ranking in the past,” she added.

IIT-Delhi, IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Kanpur, Hyderabad Central University, Delhi University, IIT-Roorkee and IIT-Guwahati figure in the top 10 institutions.

Institutions have been scored on academic reputation (30 per cent), employer reputation (20 per cent), faculty-student ratio (20 per cent), proportion of staff with PhD (10 per cent), papers per faculty from Scopus database (10 per cent), citations per paper from Scopus database (5 per cent), proportion of international students (2.5 per cent) and proportion of international faculty (2.5 per cent).
News Source (Indian Express)