What do the latest subject rankings mean for India?

With the latest QS subject rankings just published, it is a good time to consider the performance of India, one of the emerging economic powerhouses and one of the largest countries in the world for higher education.

The 2018 QS World University Rankings by Subject cover five broad subject areas: arts and humanities; engineering and technology; life sciences and medicine; natural sciences; and social sciences and management. Within these, there are 48 individual subject rankings. Rankings criteria encompass academic and employer reputation, citations per paper and the H-Index (which measures the productivity and impact of published work).

Looking in detail at the 48 subject areas through an India lens makes for interesting, challenging and at times sobering reading, while at the same time providing some tantalising glimpses into what could be.

Patchy performance

The first thing to note, and this is characteristic of Indian higher education generally, is the unevenness of performance.

Some Indian institutions are highly ranked (in the top 150 or even the top 100) in a few select areas, notably, with regard to chemical engineering, civil and structural engineering, computer science, electrical and electronic engineering, materials science and mechanical, aerospace and manufacturing engineering.

However, the number of such highly ranked institutions is limited. For example, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay stands out as being in the top echelon across these subject areas, as do some other similar institutions.

In the upper echelons of rankings India continues to rely heavily on a few elite, small and focused public institutions, namely the Indian Institutes of Technology, whose graduates are world class, snapped up in Silicon Valley and are extremely valued members of the Indian diaspora.

However, for a nation that is confronted with the challenges of providing high-quality, mass education, including to disadvantaged groups, and in both urban and rural areas, the limited number of very high-quality institutions is an area of concern.

Bridging the gap between the best and the rest is a major challenge, although to be fair there are some institutions, such as the University of Delhi and Jadavpur University, making inroads into the middle tier of rankings.

Another factor to note is the continued dominance in the rankings of public sector institutions. This is despite the Indian higher education scene becoming increasingly privatised. Private sector institutions, admittedly with different charters, objectives and capabilities to public sector institutions, do not appear in the rankings.

This may evolve over time, of course, but the fact that QS includes employer reputation as a criterion, which could perhaps favour more industry-oriented private providers with no impact on the number of private Indian players in the rankings, is worth noting and thinking about.

The second factor is the narrowness of the subject areas for which Indian institutions are ranked. Apart from engineering and a few science areas, there is an absence of ranked institutions across subject areas in India, suggesting a lack of breadth.

For example, history has one ranked institution out of 200, performing arts none, sociology two out of 300, politics and international studies one out of 200, classics none, linguistics three out of 300 and English language and literature none (even though English is a dominant mode of instruction in India).

Arguably, the Indian STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) agenda has already run out of steam, if there was any to begin with. India would appear therefore to be missing out on the crucial synergies, innovations and complementarities that arts and science collectively bring, not to mention the enhanced student experience from a more diverse, enriched curriculum.

India also has no ranked institutions for education-related subjects. Thus the pipeline for future educators is somewhat leaky. This could be particularly contentious when taking into account the widely-held view that Indian teaching lacks quality and relevance and is not up to date with the latest pedagogy.

Within the scientific disciplines, it is also noteworthy that India does not have highly ranked institutions relevant to areas of current and future challenges. For example, India is still highly reliant on agriculture yet has only one ranked institution out of 300 in this field, none in Earth and marine sciences, and three ranked out of 300 in environmental science, an area of major focus for the future.

International context

When we compare the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) for the five broad subject areas, it is apparent that the ‘BRI’ nations are dwarfed by China across all fields, although, of course, China has particular strengths in engineering and technology and natural sciences.

This is a deliberate strategy to position China for leadership in advanced technology industries and capabilities. China’s performance in the broad categories of social sciences and management and arts and humanities, while still stronger than India, Brazil and Russia, is weaker than in the science and technology arenas.

Further, if we consider the subject rankings in a broader regional context, it is clear that Asia (driven in large measure by Japan, China, South Korea and Singapore) is increasingly becoming a powerhouse in engineering and technology and to some extent in life sciences, medicine and natural sciences.

While Europe still has more institutions ranked in these fields, the gap is no longer wide in engineering and technology. North America (with far fewer countries than either Asia or Europe) continues to be a major player across the board.

In the future, could we be seeing an emerging bifurcation based on regional lines with Asia being the engineering and technology powerhouse or hub in decades to come, and other disciplines, notably the arts and humanities, being the domain of other regions? If so, this would have major implications for global and regional trade, investment, people flows and patterns of development.

For India, there continue to be enormous challenges in broadening (and deepening) the base of expertise across disciplines and institutions to develop and unlock the full potential of higher education and meet the needs of massification, as well as paying attention to educational and research capabilities which can address key and emerging challenges, for example, in the natural environment.

Dr Anand Kulkarni is consultant and principal adviser for Victoria University, Australia. His book India and the Knowledge Economy is to be published by Springer later this year.