BHU, Jamia Millia break into top Asian universities ranking: Times list

India's presence increases but many premier institutions slip on Times list

Banaras Hindu University, Jamia Millia Islamia and 10 other Indian institutions have for the first time made it to the list of top-350 varsities in the Asia University Rankings 2018.

These entrants increased the overall representation of Indian institutes to 42.    

“Two of the country’s newcomers made it to the top 200 — the Indian School of Mines at 141st and the Banaras Hindu University at a joint 194th position,” Times Higher Education (THE) said in a statement. Jamia Milia Islamia was ranked in the range of 201-250. The ranks some universities only in a range.

Phil Baty, editorial director of global rankings at THE, said: “It is a fantastic achievement that India now has 42 universities in the Asia rankings and that the country has improved on 12 of the 13 metrics underlying the rankings.”

The top Indian varsities on the list were the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Roorkee and IIT-Kanpur. The global list was topped by the National University of Singapore, Tsinghua University and Peking University (both from China), University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

"The main trend of this year’s THE Asia University Rankings is the continued rise of China. The People’s Republic now claims almost one in five places in the rankings and several of its institutions have made strong gains, not least Tsinghua University, which is now the country’s top ranked institution for the first time in the table’s six-year history," it said.

Though there were many new entrants this year, the performance of many top Indian institutions were disappointing. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras the saw the biggest decline on the top-200 list, dropping 41 places to 103. “This was mainly because of lack of citations,” the release said.

IIT-Madras didn’t reply to an email seeking the reasons behind the slide.

The IISc and IIT-Bombay slipped two points each, and were ranked 29 and 44, respectively. They also lost rankings due to a decline in citations.

The IISc and all other IITs had also failed to score in the top 200 World University Rankings 2018 released last year. The IISc dropped from the 201-250 band in the previous rankings to the 251-300 band. The IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur slipped from the 401-500 band to the 501-600 band. IIT-Bombay remained in the 351-400 range.

“Indian institutions picked up points in other areas such as research productivity, even though it tends to lag on research environment. Its only area of decline was teaching reputation,” the statement added.

Officials in the Ministry of Human Resources Development said the Centre has taken several measures to increase the global rankings of Indian universities. “We are setting up 20 institutes of eminence with an aim to break into top 100 in the next 10 years,” an official said. These 20 institutes would be allowed to take 30 per cent foreign students and 25 per cent foreign faculty. Up to 20 per cent of their programmes can be online courses.