Times Asia Ranking: India fails to make a mark

The Times Asia Ranking for the top 100 universities across Asia was recently released, which ranked University of Tokyo (Japan) as the number one university once again this year. China managed to steal the limelight with 21 Chinese universities in the top 100.
With the publicizing of Times Asia ranking, the thing which is really disheartening is that only 9 Indian universities made their mark in top 100. Those fortunate universities include Indian Institute of Science (37), Punjab University (38), IIT Roorkee (55), IIT Bombay (57), IIT Delhi (65), IIT Kharagpur (69), IIT Madras (78), Aligarh Muslim University(90) and Jawaharlal Nehru University(96).

No Indian university could make it upto top 20. Many of the Indian universities including Punjab University, Aligarh Muslim University etc have lost their positions as compared to previous year. Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore) emerged as India’s top University with Punjab University just a rank below. IIT Guwahati,Jadhavpur University, IIT Kanpur got knocked out from the list.
The Asia Ranking used 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons, which are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and government and are incorporated for giving an unbiased result.

The 13 performance indicators are grouped into following five areas:
Teaching: the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall score)
Research: volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
Citations: research influence (worth 30 per cent)
Industry income: innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
International outlook: staff, students and research (worth 7.5 per cent).

To calculate the overall rankings, “Z-scores” were created for all data sets except the results of the academic reputation survey. The calculation of Z-scores standardises the different data types on a common scale and allows fair comparisons between different types of data essentials when combining diverse information into a single ranking. Each data point is given a score based on its distance from the mean average of the entire data set, where the scale is the standard deviation of the data set.The Z-score is then turned into a “cumulative probability score” to arrive at the final totals.

After enlacing the ranking indicators the question that renders in the mind of the Indian citizens are that, why Indian education sector is not able to make up its mark universally. In every budget declaration a large amount is invested by the government in this sector. Current government also  proposed to set aside Rs.69,074.76 crore for education in 2015-16 budget. But not just financial backing up is required but a deep research and investigation is required for the betterment of future of education in India.

[author image=”http://www.aapkatimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Ankita-Yadav.jpg” ]I am Ankita Yadav, Pursuing English hons from Delhi University[/author]

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