Context: In the latest released 17th edition of  Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings (WUR) most of India’s top higher education institutions have slipped. This list also includes the slipped ranking for at least 10 Institution of Eminence (IoE).
About QS World University Rankings

• Quacquarelli Symonds(QS) is the world’s leading provider of services, analytics, and insight to the global higher education sector, whose mission is to enable people anywhere in the world to fulfil their potential through educational achievement, international mobility, and career development.  
• The QS World University Rankings portfolio, inaugurated in 2004, has grown to become the world’s most popular source of comparative data about university performance.
• It is an annual publication of university rankings which comprises the global overall and subject rankings (which name the world’s top universities for the study of 48 different subjects and five composite faculty areas), alongside our independent regional tables (such as Asia, Latin America, Emerging Europe and Central Asia and the Arab Region). 

Parameters of Ranking

• The performance of universities is measured on various parameters such as academic reputation, employer reputation, citation per faculty, faculty-student ratio, international faculty and international students.

Performance of Indian Institution

• The total number of Indian institutions in the top 1,000 global list has fallen from 24 to 21, despite the Centre’s flagship Institutes of Eminence scheme, launched two years ago in a bid to boost the Indian presence in these global rankings.
• IIT-Bombay still maintains its position as the top institution in India but has slipped 20 places from 152 to 172 in the global list.  
• The other two institutes which made into top 200 are  Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru at the 154th position, a jump from 184th rank last year and Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi on the 193rd position, down from the 182nd rank it held in the 2020 list.
• Both IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur crashed out of the top 300 and IIT Madras is at 275
• IIT Roorkee maintained its ranking at 383, while IIT Guwahati improved from 491 to 470 and  IIT Hyderabad entered the top 1,000 for the first time.

Reasons for poor performance of Indian institutions:

• Indian institutions got zero score on ratio of international faculty and students. India also scored poorly on faculty- student ratio.
• This is because India counts only full-time faculty, whereas American universities include even PhD students who are teaching or research assistants.

About the Institution of Eminence (IoE) scheme

• Institutions of Eminence scheme has been launched to empower the Higher Educational Institutions and to help them become world-class teaching and research institutions.
• Ten public and ten private institutions are to be identified to emerge as world-class Teaching and Research Institutions. 
• This will enhance affordable access to high-quality education for ordinary Indians.

Objectives of the scheme

• To develop the capacity of the students and researchers to compete in the global tertiary education marketplace through the acquisition and creation of advanced knowledge in those areas.
• To pay special attention to teaching and research in unique and emerging areas of knowledge, including interdisciplinary areas, which are regarded as important for strategic needs of the country but are not being pursued by conventional or existing institutions so far, and award degrees, diplomas and other academic distinctions.

Road Ahead

• The perception about India and its education standards play a major role which cannot be changed by an individual institution so all of the universities and institutes have to come together to tackle the issue.
• To regain lost ground, Indian higher education must find ways of increasing teaching capacity and of attracting more talented students and faculty across the world to study and work in India.
• The government has already formed a committee on how we can improve the perception of the premier Indian institutes abroad. The government should now launch a campaign similar to incredible India to change the perception.