Saturday, January 29, 2011

World University Rankings

I was looking at the world university rankings released by Times Higher Education and was surprised to find or rather not find even a single University from India in it!
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html

The irony is most of these top 200 Universities have a significant number of students from India or of Indian origin! In other words, they or rather India is indirectly contributing to these rankings. Well, the immediate reaction would be to either cry foul or blame it, yet again, on "brain drain"! Whatever the reason, it is indeed alarming and also a matter of shame when a neighboring country (China) with almost equal population has six Universities listed in the top 200 and much smaller countries like South Korea and Belgium have three and two Universities respectively among this list! What's even more shameful is that we do not make even to the "top universities in Asia" list while Turkey has two!!!
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/asia.html

The million dollar or rather one crore rupee question is: Is our education system and Universities so bad? When do we realize the importance of education and improving the infrastructure over hosting games, world cups, IPL, trying to compete with Hollywood, etc. Ah well.....

BTW, University of York (from where I graduated), makes to the list (81 Rank)! Some comfort there, albeit personal!