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Can domestic rankings be a springboard to global success?

The growing competition among universities for rankings places, and in particular the rise of Asia, can be seen in the recent Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. This is part of a broader push in the region towards more knowledge intensive, innovative economies and societies.

There are 1,396 ranked universities in the latest THE rankings, up from 1,258 the previous year. The Chinese share of ranked universities has doubled, from 5% in 2016 to almost 10% in the latest rankings. India has correspondingly increased its share from 2% to 4%.

India’s best ranked institution is in the 301-350 range, a solid rather than spectacular effort, and the bulk of its institutions are ranked in the lower reach of the rankings spectrum. Nonetheless, the growing engagement of Indian institutions is important, and time will tell whether India can continue both to push up the rankings and have more entrants in an increasingly crowded space.

Rankings with an Indian flavour

The latest results prompt an interesting question about how significant Indian domestic rankings have been in the country’s performance internationally and what the possible relationship might be between domestic and global rankings.

In 2016 India began its own domestic rankings. Although some methodological changes have been made over time, the metrics for the latest domestic rankings include:

  • Teaching, Learning and Resources, covering numbers of doctoral students, permanent faculty, faculty with PhDs and experience, financial resources and their utilisation, including capital and operational expenditure per student.

  • Research and Professional Practice, covering publications, citations in the top 25th percentile of publications, patents and research and consultancy income.

  • Graduate Outcomes, such as pass rates and the number of PhD graduates.

  • Outreach and Inclusivity, covering mobility from other states and countries, the percentage of female students and staff who are economically and socially challenged cohorts and the availability of facilities for the physically challenged.

  • Perception, covering academic and employer reputation.

The Indian domestic ranking has much in common with the main global rankings, but it has a particular Indian flavour. For example, metrics around doctoral students, publications and reputation are standard and common to the global rankings.

Importantly, the India-specific aspect is reflected in the outreach and inclusivity elements aimed at enhancing female participation in higher education (and the broader labour force, where their number is very low), and catering to the economically and socially disadvantaged, which is vital in a country with such immense inequality of opportunity.

Interestingly, compared to the global rankings, there is an emphasis on patents as being the more downstream orientation of research, reflecting the need for practical, tangible, solutions-driven approaches to research and innovation.

Also of interest is the resourcing per student metric. This is an important signpost to institutions to manage their operations efficiently and effectively and to provide students with adequate facilities. Arguably, it is also a commentary on the waste in the system.

After what could be described as a pilot in 2016, the domestic ranking has taken off in subsequent years. The number of participating institutions has increased from 724 in 2017 to 957 in 2018 and 1,479 in 2019 as institutions have become more familiar with engaging with rankings. The top 200 ranked institutions are published. There are also discipline-specific rankings.

Dominance of a few institutions

What do the results of the Indian rankings tell us? First, they reinforce the dominance of the esteemed Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institute of Science (IIS), those small, research-oriented institutions, famous for cutting-edge research and producing many high-flying graduates, a number of whom have become leading members of the Indian diaspora abroad.

Eight out of the top 10 positions in the latest domestic rankings are held by IITs or the IIS, a position largely unchanged over the few years since the rankings were established. IIT Madras and the IIS have consistently held the top two positions. These institutions are also well represented in the global rankings.

Comparing the domestic rankings with the THE ranking, we note that nearly all of the Indian institutions that are and have been ranked in the THE ranking are found in the top 100 of the domestic rankings, with a strong clustering inside the top 50. This suggests that these institutions are strong and competitive at home and abroad.

It should be noted that a number of the institutions in the top 100 in India are at the lower end of the global rankings, suggesting that best practice is still some way off. The concordance between the domestic and international rankings is also a reflection of the commonality of a number of metrics.

Interestingly, there are a few institutions that are ranked in the international rankings but not in the domestic rankings.

This could be because they fall outside the top 200 domestically (given that the results of only 200 are published) or that they don’t meet the thresholds for domestic participation (or choose not to participate) because they may not be broad-based enough in their course offerings or that, while strong in the metrics that underpin the THE rankings, they may not be strong in the ‘India specific’ type metrics, such as the outreach and inclusivity.

Learning from experience

It is also worth comparing the new Indian entrants in the THE rankings for 2020 with the 2018 rankings. There are more than 15 new Indian entrants in the latest THE rankings compared to that of two years ago. Of these new entrants, almost all have improved their domestic rankings over the two-year time period, and in some cases very significantly by more than 25 places.

Thus, improvement at home has been a springboard to inclusion in the global rankings, through capability building, learning from others and greater experience and expertise in developing more quality offerings and research.

Further, experience in actually going through the mechanics of preparing rankings submissions at home holds these institutions in good stead for participation and engagement in the global rankings.

Overall, the domestic ranking in India has been and is important for India as it modernises and reforms its higher education scene. There are also some learnings for the global rankings schema. Perhaps there is some scope for criteria in the global rankings around efficient resource use (beyond the student-staff ratio) or more ‘inclusivity and access’ measures modelled on the Indian approach.

Of course, data issues abound globally that could constrain comparisons. Nonetheless, it is instructive that THE, through its University Impact Rankings, is addressing some of these inclusivity measures and it is not a great surprise that Indian institutions have performed reasonably strongly in the most recent THE University Impact Rankings.

Dr Anand Kulkarni is associate director, planning and performance, Victoria University, Australia, and author of India and the Knowledge Economy.