Young varsities: IIT Guwahati makes it to top 100
JNU, however, missed the bus by a small margin, with IIT Guwahati beating it on the strength of its citation record.
IIT Guwahati has been listed among the top 100 young universities in the world by London-based Times Higher Education Magazine.
Listing the world’s top 100 universities under 50 years old, the magazine mentions IIT Guwahati at 87th place, marking India’s debut on the rankings. It is placed alongside the New University of Lisbon and the University of Western Sydney. IIT Guwahati campus came up in 1994.
JNU, however, missed the bus by a small margin, with IIT Guwahati beating it on the strength of its citation record.
For the third year in a row, the ranking is headed by South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology (Postech), while its national rival, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), holds on to the third spot . The second place stays with Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
The ranking puts together a new set of global universities that have managed to join the world elite in a matter of decades rather than centuries, and those with the potential to become the next generation’s Harvard or Oxford, says Times Higher Education.
“The list shows us which nations could challenge the US and the UK as future higher education powerhouses”, says a statement by Times Higher Education ranking.
As many as 29 countries are represented in the ranking with eight of them — South Korea, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Netherlands, the US, France and the UK — in the top 10.
Of the BRIC nations, only India and Brazil have a university each. The youngest institution in the list is Austria’s Medical University of Vienna, which was founded in 2004.
“There has been a great deal of soul searching in India over the fact that none of its universities make the World University Rankings’ top 200 — a serious concern given the country’s great intellectual history and growing social and economic influence. But this new analysis, which examines the next generation of global university stars, should be encouraging. Of the ‘BRICS’ nations, Russia, mainland China and South Africa do not make the grade, so it is cause for optimism that the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati breaks into the top 100,” Phil Baty, rankings editor, Times Higher Education, said.
It is learnt that Jawaharlal Nehru University outperformed IIT Guwahati in the heavily-weighted Teaching indicators category. However, IIT Guwahati outperformed on the equally weighted Research indicator group, and far outperformed JNU in the Citation Impact indicator, which is related to research performance and means that many academics from all over the world are quoting the research being produced by the tech institute.
The difference between the two in overall score was small, but as it is crowded at the lower end of the tables, a small difference can manifest itself in a big way.
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