Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 2

Panjab University has dropped 26 places to 175th rank (in Asia) in the latest Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2021.

Last year, the university was placed at 149th spot.

In total, a record 63 Indian universities participated in this year’s rankings, with 14 institutions appearing on the list for the first time.

The Asia University Rankings 2021 used 13 performance indicators, including teaching (25 per cent), research (30 per cent), citations (30 per cent), international outlook (7.5 per cent) and industry income (7.5 per cent), to rank universities.

Panjab University scored between 30.2 points to 36.3 points, while the institute had aggregated 34.2 points last year. In 2019, PU had managed 32.1 points.

“We did better in the field of industry income and research income. The university has improved on majority of the parameters. However, we witnessed a drop in citation and student-faculty ratio,” said Ashish Jain, Director, Inter-Quality Assurance Cell, PU.

“The university is ranked No. 4 among multi-faculty universities, the rankings like TIMES and QS have an inherent issue in comparing the technical institutes and multi-faculty universities in the same category, which works to our disadvantage,” said Jain.

The university has been placed higher than Thapar University, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Aligarh Muslim University and others.

However, Delhi University, Banaras Hindu University and Jamia Millia Islamia, which trailed PU in the last year’s rankings, have improved their tally this time.

Fact Check

In 2019, Panjab University was ranked 136th. Last year, it dropped to 149th among 489 institutions from 30 countries and regions in Asia. As many as 56 Indian institutions qualified for the rankings in 2020, while 49 had qualified in 2019, said sources.