Seven IITs Not to Participate in Times Higher Education World University Rankings
Earlier, in a meeting between the IITs and THE representatives, a request was made by the IITs to change the ranking parameters but eventually decided to pull out of it as no response was received from THE's end.
IIT Kharagpur, Roorkee, Madras, Guwahati, Kanpur, Delhi and Mumbai have decided to not take part in this year’s Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The decision was taken after two meetings between the representatives of the 7 IITs and Times Higher Education (THE) where the IITs representatives brought out the issue of “Transparency” in the University ranking parameters.
According to an Indian Express report dated 25th September 2019, IIT Bombay was ranked by THE even though the institute chose to stay out of it. V Ramgopal Roa, the director of IIT Delhi twitted that the actual performance of the Indian Educational Institutions cannot be gauged from the rankings reflecting from the THE World University Rankings.
The previous year’s World University Rankings list did not mention any Indian Educational Institution in the list of “Top 300 World Universities”. In this year’s rankings, 14 IITs were included in the list out of which 5 improved their position, 2 lost their position and the remaining institutes were able to hold on to their previous year rankings.
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One of the issues which were raised in the meeting mentioned earlier is the citation metric. When an institution collaborates globally for a research project, the same gets cited multiple times due to the involvement of multiple authors which results in the project being given a high citation. The institution/s involved in such projects get the undue advantage of this feels an IIT Director who wished to remain anonymous.
Evaluation of the Institutions is done by THE on the following five parameters - industry income (knowledge transfer), international outlook (students, staff and research), citations (research influence), research (reputation, income and volume) and teaching (the learning environment).
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Another director raised questions over the performance consistency reflected by rankings. After the meeting, the IIT representatives expected that THE would alter the ranking parameters but because nothing hasn’t been conveyed from the end of THE yet, the 7 IITs decided to pull out of the THE World University Rankings.