Dr. Dhanada K Mishra
Each time the world university rankings come out, as Indians we feel hugely disappointed at the shockingly low rank of our supposedly world class institutions of higher education. Its feeling similar to that we experience at the time of Olympics (fortunately only once in four years) or the Nobel prize announcements (unfortunately every year). In earlier years, we had good excuse as the top universities of the world invariably came from the United States, Europe, Japan, Canada and Australia and ours didn’t have the financial resources to compete. But more recently when Times World ranking of Universities for 2017 reported as many as 8 universities from China (including 5 from Hong Kong) that featured in the top 200, we had no excuse for not even having one in this elite group. The best Indian university in the list was Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bengaluru in the 250-300 group. Times Higher Education World ranking doesn’t assign individual ranks beyond the top 200 universities!! In spite of major investments by central government in many of our elite institutions, this state of affairs remains unchanged over last several years leading to much heart-burn and debate. While ranking of universities at global level is a relatively new but rapidly intensifying phenomenon, many unscrupulous ranking processes have been mis-used by institutions only for the purpose of admissions – particularly at national level. How ever internationally reputed ranking systems such as Times Higher Education (THE) ranking or QS World ranking (in partnership with Elsivier) have a credibility of process that are increasingly used by good institutions as a benchmark of their progress in the major metrics related to teaching, research, industry interface etc. It helps to identify strengths, weakness and opportunities for the university to plan its course of action accordingly and set priorities. In fact many of the world higher education ranking agencies have started ranking countries in terms of their system of higher education. The QS 2016 world ranking of 50 top countries placed India at 24 where China ranked 8. With India ranking very low on ‘access’ pulled its ranking down.
Some years ago, Mr Kapil Sibal – the then HRD minister in the UPA government had proposed setting up a number of National Innovation Universities that were to be designed and built to be ‘World Class’ from beginning. Reputed world class universities such as Stanford and Harvard etc had even been identified to mentor these institutions that would be lavishly funded and lead India’s push on the boundary of knowledge creation at the world stage. Unfortunately nothing much came out of it. But it did certainly raise the question, can a so called ‘World Class’ university be built in a relatively short period of time if funding was no constraint! In case of the proposed Innovation Universities, state governments were supposed to provide land. Financial resources provided by central government were to be augmented by choosing private partners in PPP mode. Many didn’t believe it was possible while a few cited examples of universities such as Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology or HKUST (among the only 14 in the top 200 Universities of the Times Higher Education ranking that are less than 50 years old) to say that it has been done! It had made me curious at that time to understand the process through which an university like HKUST could become the 44th highest ranked university in the world in only 25 years!
Around the time the National Innovation University idea was being discussed, Vedanta group of Anil Agarwal had proposed a university in Odisha which was designed to be world class from very beginning in its scale and scope. Coincidentally the Higher Education Task Force set up by Odisha government at that time was also actively conducting consultations with various stakeholders to create a road-map for development of higher education in Odisha. While the Vedant university proposal got mired in controversy over land and resistance of public who opposed the land acquisition, many of the recommendations of the Task force report has been implemented by state government. This has enabled some progress towards an expanded, qualitative and inclusive higher education system in Odisha. Most important steps among them were creation of several new unitary universities such as Ramadevi, Khallikot, VSSUT etc, setting up a consolidated state level Distance Education University, several new private universities such as Xavier University and Sri Sri University and more recently the Gandhi group and CV Raman college. Its heartening to see two of our leading private universities (KIIT and SoA) have secured reasonable ranks in the the newly introduced ranking by MHRD in last two years. How ever, the absence of the oldest state University – Utkal or VSSUT in these rankings is a matter of concern.
In the THE young university (less than 50 years old) ranking HKUST is placed in 2nd position behind École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Three institutions from India figure in the top 200 in this list which are Veltech, Chennai (74), IIT Guwahati (101-150) and Tejpur University (151 – 200). It is interesting that these institutions are probably placed below many others in the all India MHRD ranking, yet they don’t figure in the world ranking indicating perhaps lack of participation. How ever, it is encouraging that institutions like these do take the interest to participate and have the calibre to figure creditably in world ranking. Such pro-active institutions of higher education must be encouraged with greater support by Government for further progress.
History of higher education in our country is not very old and so is the case for our state of Odisha. While India’s oldest higher education institution Srirampore college was established in 1818, the Oxford university started in 1096 AD. Utkal university, our oldest university in the state was established in 1943 which is 17th oldest in the country. While Ravenshaw University was set up almost 150 years ago, it became an university only recently. Currently India has 813 universities including 23 in Odisha. It is estimated that India will need around 1500 university level institutions of higher learning in light of the growing youthful population of the country. With the inevitable growth of higher education in terms of scale to cater to all those eligible and interested in pursuing higher studies, it is imperative to ensure the quality standards so that our institutions can produce employable graduates the country needs badly to sustain economic growth. On the other hand we must ensure that world class research and development takes place in our institutions to help address pressing issues facing the country. With out quality research, the teaching standards will remain poor. It creates a vicious cycle of producing poor graduates who become inadequate teachers and researchers in turn. Focus on quality research is one of the most important ways to secure higher placement in world ranking where Indian universities lag behind badly.
While the recently introduced MHRD higher education ranking is a step in the right direction, a few specific steps must be taken to ensure that India is represented adequately on the global level when it comes to higher education. In the short-term the country must identify a handful institutions with the potential to be world class in a short period of time in future and give them the resources they need. Whether its a public or private institution, a level playing field must be created for providing financial and other resources by state and central government as well as corporate sector to such institutions in identified areas for focused and planned progress. Most institutions in India fail in two criteria in a big way when it comes to competing at the global level. One is the qualitative research output as mentioned earlier. While the volume of research publications coming out of Indian institutions are comparable to any country in the world, the quality when measured in terms of their impact (citations and importance of publishing platform such as reputed journals) is still lagging behind.
The other measure is being able to attract foreign students. For producing quality research our institutions require quality manpower. Its a matter of concern that even IITs are struggling to find suitably qualified manpower for their requirement while large number of highly qualified non-resident Indians are serving in universities abroad. Many are desirous to return to their country but are unable to do so as our system is not flexible and welcoming enough. In contrast, China has created institutions specifically to get the non-resident Chinese academics back to the country even if they were to work in Hong Kong or Macau and not in Mainland China due to their reluctance to be under an authoritarian regime. Universities like HKUST were specifically set up for this purpose and this strategy is paying rich dividend. For India to attract larger number of foreign students from developed country, the lower cost of our education system will not be enough, quality infrastructure will play a major role. For this purpose, government has to make available low cost long-term financial resources for institutions to build up their infrastructure to global standards.
Many do not give much importance to rankings! Many of our institutions like IITs are world class in their own field and have much higher ranking in Engineering or specific branch of engineering rather than as an institution or university. How ever, instead of being content with such results, one need to question whether or not, IITs should grow in to comprehensive multidisciplinary universities rather than being narrowly focused given the global trend is towards multidisciplinary research and teaching. Once education gets the priority it deserves and our higher education becomes quality conscious and research focused, there is no reason why India can not be the hub of higher education in the 21st century.
(The writer is a Civil Engineer and academician who heads the KMBB College of Engineering and Technology. Currently he is based in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as a Research Fellow working on ‘Green Concrete’ technology.)
