In the club of emerging powers, not a single Indian university features in the top 10 list! Is it a reflection on the quality of India’s education system or is it a matter of indices used in the survey? India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for one, is not happy with the 2014 QS University Rankings for universities in the BRICS countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Instead, the prime minister has called for developing an indigenous system of ranking for Indian varsities. Asserting that the existing system is skewed towards the west, he underlined the need for forging a system that will link research and education to the development needs of the country. He also spoke about including the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in the system.
The QS University ranking system ranks the universities on the basis of the following criteria: research, teaching, employability, facilities, internationalization, innovation, engagement, accessibility of the university to students.
The new list of top 100 universities in the BRICS countries was released on June 17 and was presented to Prime Minster Narendra Modi by Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani. While China leads the list by claiming six positions in the top 10, Brazil has two universities occupying seventh and ninth position on the list. These two countries are followed by Russia and South Africa, which have secured the third and tenth rank respectively.
Although 20 Indian institutes have been featured on the list, none have managed a place in the top 10. Five Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), however, figure among the top 20 in the ranking.
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