‘India should emphasise enhancing global research collaboration’: QS spokesperson William Barbieri

Why do Indian institutions continue to stagnate in terms of academic reputation or AR metric? How should they address this issue?

Exactly the same number of Indian universities improve in this metric as decline which can imply stability as much stagnation. However, India is clearly producing the research to garner growing renown among academics, as is evidenced by their research performance indicator. Nevertheless, over the past five years, India has produced only 17% of its scholarly output alongside international partners, this is…less than a third of that produced by global leaders in cross border research such as the UK. In order to disseminate its work to the wider world and enhance its global academic reputation, India should place a strong emphasis on enhancing its international collaboration in research.

Indian institutes have also shown a decline when it comes to faculty-student ratio and internationalisation. This comes two years into the introduction of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Is this an outcome of the patchy implementation of the policy or inadequate funding?

It is difficult to pinpoint the difficulties a nation as complex as India may have in implementing educational reforms. The country’s tertiary enrolment rate continues to grow which is fundamental to the aspirations espoused in the National Education Policy 2020 but also places obvious pressure on balancing teaching capacity with a growing student population. Given the scale of India’s higher education expansion and its growing number of universities, internationalisation will always be hindered by domestic difficulties such as disparate economic and social demographics, booming population and infrastructural challenges.

Many Indian institutes have in the past raised questions over “lack of transparency” surrounding the QS rankings. Has the QS tried to address those concerns? If yes, how?

QS…has always held transparency and communication as central tenets to the integrity of our rankings. The information about how our rankings are compiled is publicly available.