Unlike firms, whose performance can be assessed by looking at quantitative variables like revenue and profit, measuring relative success of educational institutions is much harder. The India Today-Nielsen ranking of India's top universities, now in its second edition, is an attempt to assess the relative standards of post-graduate educational institutions.
As in all such rankings, there is an element of subjectivity involved, which will leave some happier than others. The top five universities from 2010 continue to be the top five in 2011, with one change: Delhi University, number 3 last year, moves into the top slot, exchanging ranks with Banaras Hindu University. Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Calcutta and University of Madras remain number 2, 4 and 5 respectively.
The next five positions from 5 to 10 have witnessed change largely because University of Mumbai, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and Jadavpur University, ranked 6, 8 and 9 respectively last year did not participate in the survey this year because of constraints which prevented them from submitting factual data requirements in time for the publication deadline. We hope to have them participating next year. The University of Hyderabad and Osmania University, ranked 7 and 10 last year, move up to numbers 6 and 7.
What is worrying for India from a global perspective is how poorly even the best in India rank in comparison to their peers elsewhere. The London-based Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings-the gold standard for international university rankings-rated 27 Asian universities in the world's top 200 in 2010. Not one of those was from India. Six are from China which beats its more industrialised competitors Japan and Korea (with 5 and 4 respectively).
Another prestigious international ranking done by global education network QS puts India Today's top-ranked university, Delhi University, at number 371 in the world in 2010-11.
The University of Mumbai is bunched in the 451-500 rankings while Calcutta University is in the 500-551 bunch. Other than five IITs, no Indian university features in QS's top 50 in Asia. In Asia, Delhi University ranks 77, Calcutta University is at 116, Pune University is at 142 and Mumbai University is at 145. India simply hasn't created enough quality institutions outside the IITs that can compete even with the best of Asian universities.
India has a total of 538 universities recognised by the Union Government's Universities Grants Commission (UGC). The problem is how sharply the quality drops when one begins to look outside the top 45 at the remaining 493. Even within the top 45, there is a marked difference in quality between the top 15 and the rest.
It is easy to be complacent about India's rise as the next knowledge superpower. It is often assumed in India that while China will continue to be the workshop of the world, manufacturing everything from safety pins to microchips, India will provide the brain power. But given that Chinese universities outrank their Indian counterparts in global rankings regularly, it may be premature to draw a conclusion about India's knowledge advantage over China.
It is for the very same reason that it may be premature to write off the US as a declining global power which will eventually cede its place to China. On most rankings, US universities occupy almost all of the top 20 slots with only a few universities from the UK, such as Oxford and Cambridge, breaking their monopoly.
If China and India want to eventually run past the US, they need to build universities that will draw the best academic talent away from the US just like the US had drawn the best talent away from the UK in the course of the 20th century.
What is the main obstacle in the rise of quality Indian universities? The Government. It is a fact that the top ranked universities are government-run. But that is because the Government kept the private sector out of universities for very long. And when it did eventually allow private universities in, it did not always ensure that standards were adhered to.
Critical legislation to change this is held up as the UPA focuses its energies on battling scams rather than running government. Human Resource Development minister Kapil Sibal who has to pilot reformist legislation related to the education sector through Parliament is too busy focusing on managing the fallout of the 2G scam in his twin role as telecom minister.
A bill on a new unified independent regulator for higher education-the National Commission for Higher Education and Research-which would supercede inefficient and corrupt regulators like UGC and All India Council for Technical Education is facing opposition from within the Government-the Union health ministry does not want to give up control of medical education and the law ministry doesn't want to give up control of legal education.
A bill to open up the sector to foreign providers, which could increase supply and improve quality through competition, is still pending. The Government needs to act quickly.
The private sector has shown that it can rise to the task if given the chance. BITS Pilani, set up by industrialist G.D. Birla in the 1960s in collaboration with MIT, is a top class science and engineering institution. It ranks 14 on our list. SRM University, Tamil Nadu, which was granted deemed university status in 2002, makes an entry to our list at 39.
Much like our higher education system, these rankings are a work in progress. In 2012, we will extend the coverage of our survey beyond just post-graduate studies in arts, commerce and science to include other streams in multi-discipline universities. That will make the rankings more extensive and give even more reason for India's best universities to compete with one another and eventually, the best in the world.
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