The Indian Institute of Technology,Bombay,may have been preferred by several top-ranking candidates of the Joint Entrance Examination for some years now,but the premier engineering institute has gone down two notches in the top 200 QS Asian university rankings over the previous year. It is the third consecutive year that IIT-B which ranks 38 this year has slipped in the rankings. Its ranking was 36 last year and 30 in 2009. IIT Guwahati also fell from 66 to 82 this year. The other five older IITs have,however,managed to improve their rankings,though some of them have done so only by a slight margin as compared to 2010. While IIT Kanpur is up from 37 to 36 and is the best among the Indian institutions,IIT Delhi is up by two places from 39 to 37 this year. Last year,IIT-Bs rank was the best among the institutes from India. Similarly,IIT Madras has moved from 53 to 43 this year,IIT Kharagpur from 57 to 48,while IIT Roorkee stands at rank 56,up by 19 points last year when it stood at 75. While no Indian institute is in the top 35,the top 200 list includes 11 from India,with five of the older IITs in the top 50 slot. Several factors are considered while ranking institutes,and we may not score high in some of these. For instance,our expertise is in engineering,while the rankings look at other subjects like medicine and arts. Again,we wont score high on aspects like international faculty But the rankings wont affect us. We prefer to continue our efforts at excelling in teaching and research instead of improving the ranks, said a senior professor from IIT-B. Besides Delhi University,none of remaining three Indian universities on the list have managed to make a place in the top 100. The universities in Maharashtra have put up a dismal show,with Mumbai University slipping 49 places. It is ranked 145 this year as compared to 96 in 2010 and 130 in 2009. Pune University,too,has seen a steady drop from 100 in 2009 and 109 in 2010 to 142 this year. The rankings of other top universities in the country have seen a similar trend. For instance,while University of Calcutta has come down from 99 to 115,Delhi University has fallen 10 notches (ranked 67 in 2010) and stands at the 77th position this year. The QS Asian university rankings are assessed on various aspects,including research and teaching qualities,graduate employability and internationalisation. It uses a range of parameters that include Asian academic peer review,papers per faculty,citations per paper,student-faculty ratio,Asian employer review,international faculty,international students,inbound and outbound exchange students.
