‘Global ranking heavily tilted in favour of foreign universities’

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and founder of Boscui, Manu Mital has questioned the global ranking of universities by international agencies. He argued that the criteria of international ranking agencies like Times Higher Education (THE) is tilted in favour of foreign varsities and educational institutions. According to Mital the the global rankings are done on the basis of ‘invitation only’ which means ‘they’ get to decide who is worthy of participating in the survey and whose isn’t, and therefore, many deserving institutions are conspicuous by their absence in the final ratings.  

“Firstly the process of ranking should be made more democratic. In these global rankings a huge weightage is assigned to research work being done and the number of research papers being published. However, end users - students, parents or alumni normally cannot relate to these rankings because the parameters that are important for them from the perspective of seeking admission in an institute, college or university are significantly different,” argued Mital. 

Mital was reacting to IISc being awarded a lowly rank of 122 by THE in the top 100 universities of the world. More than 13 lakh institutions figure in Boscui’s exhaustive list of colleges. 

He further added that the prime concern for  end users are the courses offered, fee structure, student-faculty ratio, quality of faculty (qualification and experience), infrastructure, campus placement statistics, average salary offered, industry connect etc. 

The criteria of ‘university’ also means that premier Indian institutes like IIMs, IISc, ISB etc that offer only specialized courses and have otherwise earned repute over the years amongst students and employers alike, are not even considered for ranking. 

“Moreover, the fact that Indian institutes/colleges/universities don’t have too many overseas students enrolled here becomes a drawback too, since the survey criteria demands so,” he added. 

Mital argued that Indian students are held in high esteem the world over and this is evident from the fact that leading organisations like Google, Microsoft, Accenture, IBM, Dell, and even NASA, that are known to hire only the best talent, now have a sizable chunk of Indians across the ranks powering their engines.