DESCRIBING VARIOUS INDICATORS OF HIGHER EDUCATION UNIVERSITY- RANKING

1. REPORT
DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK
FOR RANKING INDIAN
UNIVERSITIES
Presented to:
Dr. Padmakumair Nair
Director
LM THAPAR SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
By:
SALONI AUL
aul.saloni60@gmail.com
MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Marketing & Higher Education Management
LM THAPAR SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
DANUBE UNIVERSITY, KREMS
• IDENTIFYING MAJOR RANKING ASSOCIATIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTES OR
UNIVERSITIES

2. • IDENTIFY THE SIX DIMENSIONS
i) How this is not effective in India
ii) How are these dimensions not suitable for the rankings to actually measure the university status
in India
• DEVELOPING A SIX DIMENSIONAL FRAMEWORK SUITABLE FOR INDIAN UNIVERSITIES
TOP 3 WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS:
1. The QS World University Ranking ranks the universities using six metrics that can effectively
capture university performance. The QS system now comprises the global overall and subject
rankings (which name the world's top universities for the study of 48 different subjects and five
composite faculty areas), alongside five independent regional tables (Asia, Latin America,
Emerging Europe and Central Asia, the Arab Region, and BRICS. Thus, universities continue to
be evaluated according to the following six metrics:
1 Academic Reputation
2 Employer Reputation
3 Faculty/Student Ratio
4 Citations per faculty
5 International Faculty Ratio
6 International Student Ratio
f igure1: this f igure depicts the percentage weightage of all 6 indicators in the ov erall ranking.
2. The Times Higher Education Rankings is an annual publication of university ranking
and it comprises the world’s overall, subject, and reputation rankings. It lists top 100
universities in the world, making it biggest international league table.
This table judges research intensive universities across all of their core missions:
• teaching
• research
• knowledge transfer
• international outlook

3. f igure 2: this f igure shows the indicators used f or the univ ersity rankings worldwide dif f erentiating 5 ov erall indicators i.e. main heads and the indiv idual
indicators under each head and the weightage of each indicator in the ov erall ranking.
3. The Academic Ranking of World Universities also known as Shanghai Ranking
is often praised for the objectivity, stability and transparency of its methodology.
The publication currently includes global league tables for institutions and a whole and for
a selection of individual subjects, alongside independent regional Greater China Ranking
and Macedonian HEIs Rankings.
f igure3: this f igure shows the methodology of ARWU i.e. criterion f or rankings and its indiv idual indicators with their weightage.

4. - The dimensions used for overall ranking of the
universities is not effective in India because of
many reasons.
- In this report, I prefer to describe all the 6
dimensions of QS World University Ranking
and criticise why they are not effective while
ranking Indian universities.
Indian institutions operate under circumstances not
captured in international rankings and these have to
be captured in a different set of parameters. Partha
Chakrabarti, director IIT Kharagpur recommended
that, like the Chinese, India should develop its own
ranking system. And once the methodology
stabilised, it could be used to compare Indian
institutions fairly with the best in the world.
The QS Ranking and the Times Higher Education
World University rankings had subjective criteria and
some data from them was not public. Reputation
surveys were generally skewed towards US and
European universities, as Asianuniversities were not
well known around the world.
QS designed its rankings in order to assess performance using six criteria — academic
reputation (40%), employer reputation (10%), student-faculty ratio (20%), citations per
faculty (20%), internationalisation (5% each) for faculty and students. Other than citations
per faculty, Indian institutions would falter in them.
ACADEMIC REPUTATION 40%
This is assessed using data from the large global survey of academics conducted by QS
each year. The results of this survey, which asks academics to identify the leading
universities in their own subject area.
The aim is to give an indication of which universities hold the strongest reputation within the
international academic community.
EMPLOYER REPUTATION 10%
This is assessed using the results of a major international survey, this time of graduate
employers, who are asked to identify the universities they perceive as producing the highest-
quality graduates.

5. The results of this survey are used to inform a number of other QS research projects,
reflecting the importance of employability and employment prospects for today’s university
applicants and graduates.
STUDENT-FACULTY RATIO 20%
This indicator assesses the ratio of full-time academic staff members employed per student
enrolled.
The aim is to give an idea of how much contact time and academic support students at the
institution may expect to receive.
CITATIONS PER FACULTY 20%
Citations assessed using data from the Scopus database of research publications and
citations. This first assesses the number of citations per research paper published, aiming
to give an idea of the impact each institution’s research is having within the research
community. The second assesses the number of research papers published per faculty
member.
This provides an indication of the overall research productivity of the university.
INTERNATIONAL FACULTY AND STUDENTS which carries (5% each) in the overall
score:
• A highly international university acquires and confers a number of advantages. It
demonstrates an ability to attract faculty and students from across the world, which in turn
suggests that it possesses a strong international brand.
• It implies a highly global outlook: essentially for institutions operating in an
internationalised higher education sector.
• It also provides both students and staff alike with a multinational environment, facilitating
exchange of best practices and beliefs.
• In doing so, it provides students with international sympathies and global awareness: soft
skills increasingly valuable to employers. Both of these metrics are worth 5% of the overall
total.
The three ranking surveys use methodologies that emphasize academic research and
faculty citation in journals, followed by other measures like employer reputation, academic
reputation, faculty-student ratio, and the international composition of faculty and students.
Indian universities lose out on many of these fronts.
In addition to lack of research citations, they perform badly on other metrics like faculty-to-
student ratios and lack of internationalism.
In India, Institutions do not have many international faculty or students. In the QS rankings
last year, the top Indian institution, IISc, had no scores for employer reputation, international
faculty or international students. Institutions in India are at a disadvantage here, as the
domestic demand is high. China also has a high demand for the domestic faculty and
students but the case is different.
In India demand is an increasing problem but in China it is a decreasing problem. Indian
elite institutions, under pressure admit more students who are not likely to go international
in the near future. QS stands for Quacquarelli Symonds, a British company that specialises
in education and overseas studies, whose important parameter is mobility or exchange of
students and faculty globally.

6. CRITIQUE: INTERNATIONAL FACULTY AND INTERNATIONAL
STUDENTS
How is this dimension not effective in India ?
More international students at World’s top ranked universities
The mass expansion of international student mobility has been a major global trend over the
last 30 years. And the latest data from the QS Intelligence Unit shows that the number of
international students at the world’s top-ranked universities has again accelerated.
International enrolments at the top 400 universities in the QS World University Rankings® grew by
80,000 this year, to a total of 1.37 million. This represents an average of approximately 3,400
international students per institution, up from 3,225 in 2012 – an annual growth of 6.5%.
The trend is even more evident among the elite top 100 universities, where international student
enrolments grew by 9% to an average of approximately 5,100 per institution.
source: https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/world-university-rankings/more-international-
students-worlds-top-ranked-universities
Top-ranked universities likely to be more international
The correlation between universities’ ranking position and international student enrolments is evident
across the full range of universities in the QS World University Rankings 2013/2014.
International students would choose to apply to universities with the strongest international
reputations. And in turn, as universities become more internationally diverse, their international
reputations also grow in strength. So it seems likely that a circular effect is at play.
The proportion of international students is itself one of the indicators used in compiling the QS World
University Rankings – but it only accounts for 5% of a university’s overall score.
The latest trends in international student mobility
While the QS data-set doesn’t indicate where the students are coming from or what programs they
are undertaking, it provides the most current view on student mobility at the institutional level
globally.
Most student mobility data, such as Education at a Glance, IIE’s Open Doors, the British Council,
and so on, tends to have a fairly long time-lag to publication. The QS data, which is current to within
weeks or a few months rather than many months or years, offers a more current insight into global
trends.
In an era where the international dimension is core business for all world-class universities, and the
internationalisation of research, teaching and community engagement is carefully considered in
strategic planning processes, this makes it an important resource for all those with an interest in the
sector.
Effect of Rankings
Rankings affect universities' decisions about their international partnerships. Such partnerships have
become strategically important for research, academic programmes,and student/faculty exchanges.
According to an international survey, 57 per cent of respondents said their institute's ranking was
influencing whether researchers in other HE institutions partnered with them, and 34 per cent said
they felt rankings were influencing whether academic or professional organisations would accept
their membership.
For a university, not being ranked can mean a university becomes invisible to international PhD
students, 'world-class' researchers, academic partners, philanthropists and donors.
Rankings have placed a new premium on status and reputation, with a strong bias towards long-
established and well-endowed institutions, usually with medical schools,in developed countries. This

7. system makes it impossible for developing country universities to compete with the big players in the
United States or Europe. The gap between elite and mass education and between universities in the
developed and developing world is likely to widen.
5 Dimensional framework has been designed by MHRD after
studying the drawbacks of the top 3 world university ranking
associations.
Introducing National framework by Ministry of Human Resource
Development for ranking of institutions in India:
• The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) has been approved by the MHRD and
launched by Honourable Minister of Human Resource Development on 29th September, 2015.
This framework outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country.
• The methodology draws from the overall recommendations and broad understanding arrived at by
a Core Committee set up by MHRD, to identify the broad parameters for ranking various
universities and institutions.
• The parameters broadly cover "Teaching, Learning and Resources", "Research and Professional
Practices", "Graduation Outcomes", "Outreach and Inclusivity" and "Perception".
• NIRF has been given the responsibility of ranking institutions that have applied and submitted their
data.
• The ranking of the Institutions will be done based on the parameters proposed by NIRF for different
disciplines.
• The need for the NIRF has been realised because indian universities were not able to get top
positions in the world university ranking, the reason for this has later been identified that the ranking
indicators were not suitable with the structure of indian universities.
source: https://w w w .nirfindia.org/Home

8. PARAMETERS FOR RANKING UNDER NIRF
CONCLUSION
• The imperative for creating India-specific rankings has come from the poor performance of our
universities in world university rankings.
• Many higher education experts have for long argued that our universities rank low or are entirely
missing from the charts because many of the parameters used by international ranking bodies
such as Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE) and Shanghai Jiao Tong
University (the Shanghai Rankings) — especially international reputation and internationalisation
but also research output — are insensitive to the higher education scenario in countries such as
India where the goal of improving access to higher education, whether by building new institutions
in far-flung places or through caste-based reservations, has been a bigger priority than improving
the quality of education.
• In particular, world university rankings by QS and others give far too much emphasis on
internationalisation (the presence of international students and faculty, among other things) and
reputation (which favours older, established Western institutions), areas in which India’s

9. universities are weak, and ignore parameters such as social inclusion, about which we have been
more attentive given the context of our history, level of development, ethnic diversity and social
make up.
• Poor performance in internationalising their campuses and a low research score have pulled down
Indian higher education institutes such as the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and some of the
Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University
Rankings 2018.
• While IISc has dropped from the 201-250 band in the previous rankings to the 251-300 band,
• IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur have fallen from the 401-500 band to the 501-600 band. IIT-Madras fell
from the 401-500 band to the 601-800 cohort.
• Indian universities performed poorly on internationalisation, with all except one dropping places,
mainly due to other universities rising at a faster rate.
• Government policy limits the number of foreign students who can study in India and prevents
international scholars from being hired in long-term faculty positions. THE is of the view that India
may recover on this metric on the back of its world-class university plan, which aims to provide
additional funding to select public and private universities for infrastructure and academics.
source: World Univ ersity Rankings 2018: No Indian institute in top 200
http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-af f airs/the-world-univ ersity -rankings-2018-no-indian-institute-in-top-200-117090501136_1.html