Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore is the only Indian University that has featured on the list of top 100 varsities in the Times Higher Education (THE) ranking. IISc ranked 99th on the list. The number of US institutions on the list has come down to 31 from 34 last year. Asia universities have gone up to 25 positions from 18 in 2014. The US institutions dominated the top 10 list with the Stanford University, California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology getting first three positions.
“This year’s stand-out success story has to be India, making its debut in this prestigious engineering and technology ranking, which represents the top few per cent of world universities for these subject disciplines,” said The World University Rankings editor Phil Baty.
“Whether you look at high-tech sectors such as IT or aerospace engineering or more traditional fields such as steelmaking, India’s engineering and technology prowess is highly visible the world over in the shape of companies based in India or run by people born in India, such as Google and Microsoft, Infosys and Wipro or Tata and Mittal.”
Baty said like their flagship World University Rankings, the THE ranking for engineering and technology subjects applies rigorous standards. It uses tough global benchmarks across all of a global research university’s key missions — teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.
“But although the table employs the same range of 13 performance indicators they have been carefully recalibrated to fit more closely the research culture in this subject,” said Baty. Maximum weightage (30%) is given to teaching-learning environment and research followed by research, citations (27.5) and international outlook (7.5%).
IISc scored 60.7 points for teaching and 46.7 in research as per performance breakdown of the ranking. In teaching, IISc is among the top 50 universities while for research it is ranked 77th. Baty said while the US and UK still dominates the upper echelons of this table, Asia is shifting the balance of power, proving that its institutions are world-class in this field.
“Six Asian universities — the National University of Singapore, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, Peking and Tsinghua Universities from China and Korea’s Seoul National University — make the top 30.”
