Five IITs — Delhi, Bombay, Kharagpur, Kanpur and Madras — are among the top 20 institutions in 2014 QS University Rankings BRICS, which grades higher education institutions of the BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Of the top 100 institutions, 20 were from India. Besides the IITs, they included University of Mumbai, University of Madras, Banaras Hindu University, Manipal University, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, University of Pune, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Calcutta University, Delhi University, Allahabad University, Amity University, Anna University and Panjab University.
The parameters considered for the ranking included academic reputation, employer reputation, student-faculty ratio, PhD papers per faculty, citations per paper and international faculty.
This year, again Chinese universities dominated the top 100 and the top 10, while Indian institutions were the leaders in recruiting highly qualified academic staff. IIT Kharagpur has a higher proportion of PhDs among its staff than any university in the five countries. In fact, three more Indian institutions feature among the top five on this measure. On overall staffing levels, only Manipal University appears among the top 100.
The five IITs had ranked among the first 20 on last year’s list as well. At No. 13, Delhi topped Indian universities on the list, followed by IIT Bombay, Madras, Kanpur and Kharagpur, ranked in that order from 15 to 18. Earlier in the day, HRD Minister Smriti Irani presented the first copy of the 2014 rankings to Prime Minister.
The dedicated ranking of higher education institutions of the BRICS countries was introduced in 2013. The project, developed by QS World University Rankings in collaboration with Russian news agency Interfax, was an effort to highlight and track progress made by these countries in the field of higher education and facilitate comparison of universities amongst these five countries that share certain socio-economic dynamics.
