IITs dominate first-ever Indian university rankings

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) dominate the first-ever standalone ranking of India's higher education institutions released by a UK-headquartered think tank on Monday.
IIT Bombay tops the 'QS India University Rankings', with IITs Madras (3), Delhi (4), Kharagpur (5), Kanpur (6), Roorkee (9) and Guwahati (10) grabbing seven of the top 10 slots.

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore comes in at second, with University of Hyderabad and University of Delhi among the others making a top-10 mark at seventh and eighth respectively in the list released by QS Quacquarelli Symonds.

"This inaugural table, which is based on the same indicators of its parent BRICS rankings, evaluates the Indian institutions through independent and international lenses," said Ben Sowter, Research Director at QS.

"The results reveal that research productivity at leading Indian institutions is increasing and the impact of such research is gradually rising. They also enjoy a good standing with employers while they achieve less recognition with their international academic peers, perhaps suggesting the need to intensify regional and global collaborations," he said.

QS Quacquarelli Symonds describes itself as a global higher education (HE) think tank responsible for the world's most-consulted world university rankings.

Its first-ever Indian edition of the rankings is designed to offer an independent analysis of the performance of Indian institutions.

The rankings include Public Universities, Private Universities and HE Institutions or Deemed Universities. Single faculty specialist institutions or single level institutions (eg. teaching principally at post-graduate level) are not included.

According to the analysis, 20 Indian institutions receive full marks in the "Staff with PhD" category, the indicator designed to identify the extent to which institutions are cultivating a highly-qualified faculty body. In the research productivity indicator, nine institutions achieve a score between 98.4 and 100.

IIT Bombay, Madras, Delhi, Kharagpur, Kanpur and the University of Delhi enjoy "outstanding regard" among the nearly 43,000 international employers surveyed, while IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi and the IISc Bangalore were the most voted by 83,000+ international academics polled.

On a metric-by-metric basis, other institutions that stand out for QS include the Institute of Chemical Technology Mumbai, which achieves the highest score of the QS' indicator of research impact, adjusted for faculty size. It is followed by Shivaji University, Kolhapur and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Coimbatore achieving the perfect score in the Faculty/Student indicator.