New Delhi: The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, has been recognised as the world’s top research university as per the citations per faculty indicator, while the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Delhi continued their positions as the best colleges in India, ranking among the top 200 universities in the coveted QS World University Rankings released on Wednesday. IIT Guwahati also figured in the world list, ranked 41st in the category.
The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) secured a perfect score of 100 out of 100 for the citations per faculty (CPF) metric in the analysis by London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). However, it has fallen four places to 177 from its 2021 rank of 172.
IIT Delhi has become India’s second-best university, having risen from the 193rd rank to 185 this year. IIT Delhi overtook the IISc which bagged the 186th rank, a notch below last year’s rank, according to the rankings.
IIT Madras, on the other hand, gained 20 places and now ranks joint-255th, which is its highest position since 2017. IIT-Kharagpur is ranked at 280, while IIT Guwahati, at joint-395th rank, has entered the global top-400 for the first time.
Meanwhile, IIT Hyderabad, in the 591-600 rank band, enjoyed its first year ever in the top 600 and the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) made its debut in the QS World University Rankings, placed in the 561-570 band.
Criteria
For the QS World University Rankings, institutions and universities were judged on six indicators — academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty, faculty/student ratio, international faculty ratio and international student ratio.
This year, rankings listed the world’s top 1,300 universities – 145 more than in the last year’s edition across 97 locations.
Of 13,000 institutions, 6,415 were eligible for the survey analysis and 1,705 were assessed for the final table. The results accounted for the distribution and performance of 14.7 million academic papers published between 2015 and 2019, and the 96 million citations received by those papers.
They also accounted for the expert opinions of over 1,30,000 academic faculty and over 75,000 employers.
QS World University Rankings: Top 3 universities
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved a record-extending 10th consecutive year as world number one. The University of Oxford has risen to second for the first time since 2006, while Stanford University and the University of Cambridge share the third spot.
List of Top Indian institutions according to QS World University Rankings:
- IIT Bombay (177)
- IIT Delhi (185)
- IISc Bangalore (186)
- IIT Madras (255)
- IIT Kanpur (277)
- IIT Kharagpur (280)
- IIT Guwahati (395)
Indian universities have also improved their research impact, relative to global competitors. Seventeen of India’s 35 universities have seen a rise in their CPF score, against only 12 drops in CPF, according to the rankings.
However, Indian universities continue to struggle in QS’s measure of institutional teaching capacity as 23 of them have suffered declines in QS’s faculty/student ratio indicator, with only six recording improvements.
No Indian university ranks among the top 250 in the faculty/student ratio category.