The question of quality

Dr. Manasvi M. Kamat

The efforts to rank global universities based on quality are not new and dates back over 15 years. The first international rankings, the Academic Ranking of World Universities ARWU or Shanghai Rankings were published in 2003 by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. These were initially used to establish the standing of Chinese universities internationally following the launch of a government initiative to create world-class universities. Subsequently over a period of time, the other reckonings that begun to gain higher prominence in the academic circles world-wide are the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Rankings and the Time Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.

There are other host of organisations nationally and internationally who provide their own rankings like Financial Times ranking for Business Schools and US Today ranking for American Universities. The new trends are emerging in providing regional and national rankings for the top institutions for example QS provides rankings for Asian Universities.Each ranking is distinct since has its own quality assessment methodology. QS World Ranking for instance assesses university performance across parameters like research, teaching, employability and “internationalisation” using six performance indicators, which carry a different weightage when calculating overall scores. 

Thus there is a fundamental difference in the focus, methodologies applied and the parameters used to collate the overall ranks. All ratings have their fundamental limitations as well. 

The ARWU rankings places high reliance on prestige and historical reputation of the institution taking into account Nobel Prizes that may have been won 100 years ago and focuses heavily on research in the natural sciences. 

The QS rankings on the other hand gives a good indication of how a university is perceived but lacks nuance when it comes to measuring the student experience thus can provide an alternative perspective with more focus on student experiences and outcomes. This explains the huge differences between the ranks given to the same universities in different tops.

Whoever may be the rankers, all rankings show global dominance of US and UK in quality benchmarking. 

Of the top 10 according to QS or ARWU, normally around six are from the US while the other are from the UK.  On an average in the top 100, there are 30 percent from the US while 20 percent from the UK and among the remaining the major are from Europe or Canada. 

Not more than three to four Indian universities feature in the top 250 universities of any of the rankings among which IIT Bombay, IISc Bangalore and IIT Delhi are the main contenders. 

Around 20-25 institutions make it to the top-1000 spot given that we have over 800 Universities in the country. Though India continues to defend its position as the third most represented country on THE Asia Rankings 2019 despite several of its Universities slipping in positions but the fact that India has 12 new entrants in the elite list, the absence of any in the top 25 is discomfiture.

Where and why do our Indian Universities fail has been the matter of debate and discussion in the academia and the policy realms. In one of the recent books by Pankaj Chandra on ‘ Building Universities That Matter: Where are Indian Institutions Going Wrong’  (Orient Blackswan, 2017)is an impressively detailed look at what is wrong with Indian institutions. Overregulation, the author cites and fundamental lack of trust are the prime belittlers in Indian higher education. Instead of being a nurturing environment, it is a punitive one, and consensus is sought on the lowest level of bureaucratic convenience rather than academic excellence. Poor pedagogy and the spirit of ‘un-enquiry’ are cited as the reasons for not excelling enough.

The rich data set provided by the rank assessor’s rich data becomes a vital tool providing valuable resource for students and in helping them to make important decisions of who to trust with their education. The rankings are also widely used by faculty to inform career decisions, by university leaders to help set strategic priorities and benchmarking to help monitor policy. Rankings also help gain the reputation helping universities to attract top-quality staff and funding, and it is the number one consideration for international students when deciding where to study.

Not many State universities in India make it to the top as they normally have to bridge the gap between inadequate schooling and the high standards of a leading university. Most among them neither have the pleasure of funding for their necessities leave aside building and maintaining ‘world class infrastructure’. The faculty capabilities too are marred by the lacklustre reservation policy where academic merit is overshadowed by ‘caste’ criteria.

All the rank assessors place more importance to the input from research and citation and tend to use it as one of the major criteria for the university rankings. It is believed that better research attracts a greater reputation and conversely better reputation attracts greater funding and increased collaborations. In addition to resource incapability and not so efficient faculty, the other two major factors contributing to failure of Indian universities breaking into top is poor citation index of Indian research and low ratio of international faculty and students corresponding the local one. 

Poor resource allocation for research in India is the other culprit for the inactivity. Research grants scantily come for liberal arts and social sciences and thus despite excellent Indian faculty in some deserving cases, universities fail to produce world-class research.

India has youngest population in the world with 65 percent of the Indians under 35 years, around 130 million people will be in college going age bracket in the next decade. This case augments well to ensure quality in higher education. The expectations from ‘Institution of excellence’ have already gone for a toss. India needs to bat well for the quality factor.