Asian ranking downgrades Indian university

Mumbai:Not a single Indian university , including the IITs, has fared well in an all-Asian varsity ranking for 2011.

IIT-Bombay is the only one to figure in the world top 200, at 187 , lower than the previous year’s rankof 163 (see box). The QS Asian University rankings reveal a pathetic performance by domestically high-rated varsitiesin the state , with the University of Mumbai pegged the worst , though it set asidefundstobetter its ranking this year .

A university founded merely two decades ago The Hong Kong University of Science and Technolog has topped the charts ,defying critics who claim that long-established universitieshave an insuperable advantage .

It not only raced past its veteran neighbour , Hong Kong University , but is also the youngest among the top 100 QS World Ranking Asian Universities . The University of Cambridge got a perfect 100, topping the world chart . We are doing better than earlier . But at other places , they are improving a lot faster than us. So , we are not static ; the number of publications has gone up and research funding has also improved , said IIT-Bombay director Devang Khakhar . About IIT-Bombay’s rank , he said they had done slightly worse because student strength had gone up , but faculty numbers had not increasedcorrespondingly .

All the seven old IITs have made it to the Asian universities ranking , but their ranks have slid more than last year’s . Internationalization takes up 20%of the points .Butwe are notinternational ; neither do we have international students nor do we have foreign faculty members . In terms of funds , China and Korea are higher than us. Lastly ,wedon’thave medicine andlaw . So we lose points there too. We are starting off with a handicap , saidIITMadras director M S Ananth . In terms of funding and opening doors for foreign people ,China hastaken the rightsteps .

Hong Kong’s continued strong showing in the Asian rankings , with four universities in the top 20 and all six in the top 50, contrastswithcontinuing disappointment for mainland China , noted the analysis . Although Peking and Tsinghua universities remain in the top 20, China has only 14 universitiesin thefirst 100,having made marginal progress since last year . The muchsmaller system in SouthKorea outperforms China . It has four institutionsin thetop 20,ledby SeoulN ationalU niversity , and 16 in thetop 100.

However , Richard Holmes , a frequentcommentator on rankings ,writing in University World News, had a different take , saying more Japanese universities were falling than rising , while Chinese and Korean varsities wereon the rise . Thiscouldbe partof apermanentshiftin theworldbalance of academic power .

Top 5 World Universities

1 University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

2 Harvard University, United States

3 Yale University, United States

4 UCL (University College London), United Kingdom

5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States

Top 5 Asian Universities

1 The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

2 University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

3 National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore

4 The University of Tokyo, Japan

5 The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kon second one