The economic success of the state is determined by their progress in the field of education. Education is a nation’s strength. Indian higher education is the third largest in the world, after the United States and China. Since Independence, India has marching continuously in the field of education. Although there have been a lot of impediments to the higher education system of India, equally have created a lot of opportunities to overcome these challenges and to position India much better in the global rankings.
What Challenges Indian Higher Education is facing for Ranking
Our education system has not developed fully yet. We are not able to put a single university in the top 100 universities in the world. Various governments came and they tried to boost the education system and implemented various education policies but they were not perfect enough to produce fruitful results for the Universe. Still, we are facing impediments in our path as there are a lot of challenges in our education system. Some of the basic challenges in the higher education system in India are discussed below:Enrollment: The Gross enrollment ratio of India in higher education is only 25.8% which is minimal as compared to the developed as well as, other developing countries. With the enrollments at higher education level, the supply of higher education institutes is insufficient to meet the growing demand in the country.Equity: The Gross Enrollment Ratio among male and female students varies to a greater extent. Some states have high GER while some are behind the race. This reflects a significant imbalance within the higher education system.Quality: Ensuring quality in higher education institutes is the foremost challenge in the country today. Still, a large number of colleges and universities in India are unable to meet the basic requirements laid down by the UGC and that is the reason why our universities are not in a position to match up with the top universities of the world.Infrastructure: Poor infrastructure is another Impediment in the path of the higher education system of India. There are various colleges which suffer from physical facilities and infrastructure.Faculty: The shortage of qualified teachers’ has been posing challenges to quality education for many years. Many NET/ Ph.D. candidates are applying in other departments even though there are lots of vacancies in higher education.Research and Innovation: lack of research and innovation facilities in the country has stalled the growth of the higher education sector in India.These days the government has decided to decode the data of various ranking Organizations to determine where universities stand, and it’s mind-boggling. The parameters on which the ranking of the institutes depends are undergraduate teaching, research (volume, citation, income), teaching, employ ability, knowledge transfer.
What’s Need of Ranking?
Ranking need comes into the picture to ensure that all universities globally should know where they are standing in comparison to other universities of the world. So that they can create a sense of competition and get to know their real evaluation for the betterment of Education.The ranking is also essential to create a value of any University, College or Country globally. Its brands them all across on an International Platform.READ MORE : IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore Among Top 10 In FT Asia-Pacific Business School Rankings
Working of Ranking System
Ranking Systems seek to gain in more or less the same set of parameters, irrespective of where they are located and the local culture they were set up to serve.Here are few known examples –
The QS World University Rankings Methodology
QS World University Rankings consults with many university departmental heads for identifying the core values and missions of the university education system. The QS World University Rankings seek to evaluate universities according to the following metrics.Academic ReputationEmployer ReputationFaculty/Student RatioEducation- Citations per Faculty
Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings
THE is the only global performance tables that determine research-intensive universities across all the domains for a university. They employ five metrics which are teaching, research, knowledge transfer, international outlook, and industry income. THE uses thirteen performance criteria to yield the most extensive study which is trusted by many global students, academicians, industries, and governments. There are many University in the world but these ranking companies specifically select the institutions that have the reputation and good reviews. Data collection is done in a standardized manner.
Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)
ARWU is now maintained by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy has been delivering annual global rankings of universities since 2003. Even the ‘The Economist’ magazine cites the ARWU rankings. They have received laurels for being “consistent and transparent”.They mainly give emphasis on the number of articles published in Natural Science and English language Science Journals. Also, they rely heavily on “ research indicators”. However, it does not measure the quality of teaching.
Center for World University Rankings
CWUR publishes global University rankings based on the quality of education as well as the quality of research. They do not rely on surveys and university data submissions. They mainly rank the world’s leading Universities in 227 subject categories. CWUR rely heavily on the research articles published in top-tier journals.
Reuters’s World’s top 100 Innovative Universities
Their ranking is empirical and they employ 10 different metrics to rank Universities. They mainly focus on academic papers, patent filings etc.
Leiden Ranking
Leiden ranking is maintained by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University. They maintain a European and worldwide ranking of the top 500 Universities based on the impact of indexed publications per year. While ranking, Leiden Ranking takes into account differences in language, Institutional size, and discipline. Different metrics they employ are a number of publications, citations, and field -averaged Impact per publication.
A. Ranking induces a sense of competition among all universities globally which leads to constant improvement in the quality of education.B. University leaders can implement these rankings as a strategic planning tool and measure the impact of their own efforts. C. They can benchmark the ranking of their university compared to others. These ranking can be relied upon as an indicator of the quality of research output.D. Many students who are opting for admissions to the best universities in the world are relying on the Ranking companies.
What are Drawbacks ?
A. Alienation –A university in order to compete globally tends to shift its focus from quality classroom teaching to internationalism and research. This results in an alienation of our higher education institutions because we are trying to fit into a global.B. Reliability-These ranking companies are hugely in bias towards large universities. Universities that have publications in the English language are favored over others.C. Losing focus for Quality Education –Ranking introduces us to a set of notions about the utility of a higher education institution.In order to compete and rank globally greater emphasis is laid on publications and a concomitant emphasis, therefore, on research – but not so much on teaching. D. Negative Competition-In order to attract foreign students, universities in India have concentrated more on internationalization rather than upgrading their syllabic or pedagogies for Indian students. An enhanced spirit of competition has entered into the system. In order to deliver quality education as a University, you need to continually update and upgrade teaching materials, syllabic, pedagogies, and testing mechanisms.
What Next ??
Few steps that can reduce the negativity of Ranking A: Teaching should become central to the ranking process. It is the basic work if most universities in India.]
B. After understanding the ranking methodologies, all universities whether large or small can improve their performance which will make them stronger and ultimately improve their ranking, institutional position, and reputation. C. Faculty members should use these ranking for improving their academic performance. D. Many university leaders are choosing international sponsorship and collaborations to stay abreast of the competition. Faculty members are striving hard to publish quality research papers with proper citations.
Our education system has not developed fully yet. We are not able to put a single university in the top 100 universities in the world. Various governments came and they tried to boost the education system and implemented various education policies but they were not perfect enough to produce fruitful results for the Universe. Still, we are facing impediments in our path as there are a lot of challenges in our education system.
Some of the basic challenges in the higher education system in India are discussed below:
Enrollment: The Gross enrollment ratio of India in higher education is only 25.8% which is minimal as compared to the developed as well as, other developing countries. With the enrollments at higher education level, the supply of higher education institutes is insufficient to meet the growing demand in the country.
Equity: The Gross Enrollment Ratio among male and female students varies to a greater extent. Some states have high GER while some are behind the race. This reflects a significant imbalance within the higher education system.
Quality: Ensuring quality in higher education institutes is the foremost challenge in the country today. Still, a large number of colleges and universities in India are unable to meet the basic requirements laid down by the UGC and that is the reason why our universities are not in a position to match up with the top universities of the world.
Infrastructure: Poor infrastructure is another Impediment in the path of the higher education system of India. There are various colleges which suffer from physical facilities and infrastructure.
Faculty: The shortage of qualified teachers’ has been posing challenges to quality education for many years. Many NET/ Ph.D. candidates are applying in other departments even though there are lots of vacancies in higher education.
Research and Innovation: lack of research and innovation facilities in the country has stalled the growth of the higher education sector in India.
These days the government has decided to decode the data of various ranking Organizations to determine where universities stand, and it’s mind-boggling. The parameters on which the ranking of the institutes depends are undergraduate teaching, research (volume, citation, income), teaching, employ ability, knowledge transfer.
Ranking need comes into the picture to ensure that all universities globally should know where they are standing in comparison to other universities of the world. So that they can create a sense of competition and get to know their real evaluation for the betterment of Education.
The ranking is also essential to create a value of any University, College or Country globally. Its brands them all across on an International Platform.
READ MORE : IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore Among Top 10 In FT Asia-Pacific Business School Rankings
A. Alienation –A university in order to compete globally tends to shift its focus from quality classroom teaching to internationalism and research. This results in an alienation of our higher education institutions because we are trying to fit into a global.
B. Reliability-These ranking companies are hugely in bias towards large universities. Universities that have publications in the English language are favored over others.
C. Losing focus for Quality Education –Ranking introduces us to a set of notions about the utility of a higher education institution.In order to compete and rank globally greater emphasis is laid on publications and a concomitant emphasis, therefore, on research – but not so much on teaching.
D. Negative Competition-In order to attract foreign students, universities in India have concentrated more on internationalization rather than upgrading their syllabic or pedagogies for Indian students. An enhanced spirit of competition has entered into the system. In order to deliver quality education as a University, you need to continually update and upgrade teaching materials, syllabic, pedagogies, and testing mechanisms.
