BANGALORE: Even as the newly flown  human resource development ministry is taking effective measures to bring in an India-centric ranking of higher educational institutions, it seems not much have changed. The inaugural global ranking by U.S. education analysis and ranking website US News features only four Indian universities in the top 500 and none in the top 300 in the world, reports Ramya of TNN.   

Among the Indian universities that make it to the list include, University of Delhi at 316^th, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore at 323rd, followed by IIT-Bombay and IIT-Kharagpur at 405th and 484th, respectively. But when it comes to top 50 institutions in Asia, University of Delhi and IISc, fare much better and occupy 45th and 46th places respectively.

Among the Global Universities Ranking, four of the top five institutions are based in the U.S. that include, Harvard University at first position, followed by MIT, University of California - Berkeley, and Stanford University. Oxford University in the UK holds the fifth position, followed by Cambridge University, California Institute of Technology, University of California - Los Angeles, University of Chicago and Columbia University in the remaining positions.

The U.S. News which has been ranking U.S. institutions for 30 years now, listed out the these top 500 institutions based on 10 indicators that included global and regional research reputation, publications, normalized citation impact, total citations, number and percentage of highly cited papers, international collaboration, number of PhDs awarded and number of PhDs awarded per academic staff member.

It also exclaimed that, "Students can use these rankings to explore the higher education options that exist beyond their own countries' borders and to compare key aspects of schools' research missions."

Speaking about such rankings, Bhaskar Ramamurthi IIT-Madras director said, "Rankings are important. But we are finding that the parameters on which they are based are evolved to suit certain types of universities—globalised comprehensive ones. These are places where nearly half of the students and faculty are from other parts of the world and where all subjects are taught. Most of the IITs only deal with engineering. We have a problem with the way such surveys are conducted."

And about the new India-centric ranking system, Ramamurthi said, "We will look at employer reputation, faculty-student ratio and probably do an academic survey. He further added, “We will ask the right questions."

The deadline for the India-centric ranking is the 2015 academic year. It will help students gauge the quality of Indian institutions.
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