‘Lack of infrastructure cost us university rankings’

BHUBANESWAR: Union Higher Education Secretary R Subrahmanyam on Friday attributed the failure of Indian universities in making it to the top-100 list of the World University Rankings-2018 to deficiencies in infrastructure and internationalisation of education.Subrahmanyam said the deficiencies are in areas of perception and internationalisation of higher education. Since perception is rated by global experts, it is natural that people who have graduated from Oxford and Harvard will automatically pick those institutions. “We also have disadvantages in international faculties and students,” he told this paper on the sidelines of Smart India Hackathon organised by CV Raman College of Engineering here.

While the Centre’s policy limits the number of students from abroad and prevents international scholars from being hired into long-term faculty positions, its world-class university plan aims at providing additional funding for selected universities for infrastructure and academics can more than make up for the gaps.“A new scheme, Revitalising of Infrastructure and Systems in Education (RISE), launched in the Budget this year aims to augment resources in education sector by 2022,” Subrahmanyam said.

The Higher Education Secretary, however, asserted that quality of education, especially technical, is sometimes better than some of top institutions in the world. “On the whole we are good, but there are deficiencies which needs to be looked into,” he admitted.Secretary, Skill Development and Technical Education Sanjay Kumar Singh and Chairman of the college Sanjib Rout were present.