India more than doubles representation in Times Higher Education’s list of Asia’s best universities

MUMBAI: India has 33 institutions in the top 300 of the newly-expanded The Times Higher Education (THE) Asia University Rankings 2017, compared to 16 in the top 200 last year. Seven of these institutes are new entrants, and eight in the top 100.

The country’s highest-ranking institution is the Indian Institute of Science, which ranks joint 27th. Besides IISc, other Indian institutes in the top 50 include Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (42nd), and Veltech University (joint 43rd).

“It is great news that India has more than doubled its representation in this year’s ranking of Asia’s best universities. It means that India is now the third most-represented nation in the table for the first time,” said Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education rankings, in a statement.

“India’s strong performance is partly thanks to the country recognising the importance of participating in global benchmarking exercises; last year the government launched a new funding-backed project aimed at catapulting Indian Institutes of Technology to the top of world university rankings. However, while India punches above its weight in terms of its GDP per capita, it underperforms given its large population of university-aged people,” added Baty.

Among the largest gains on the list has been on the part of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, which has jumped from the 101-110 band to 63rdplace, due to improvements across the board and a particularly high jump in its amount of industry income

However, lower down the table, several Indian universities have slipped down the list largely due to increased competition -- this year’s ranking includes 300 universities, up from 200 last year. For example, the University of Calcutta has dropped from the 141-150 band to the 191-200 cohort while Amrita University has fallen from 181-190 to 251+.

For the second year running, Singapore’s National University and China’s Peking University have been ranked first and second respectively in the overall list. China’s Tsinghua University, Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and the University of Hong Kong are in third, fourth and fifth places respectively.

Only two Japanese institutions appear in the top 20, despite the country’s strong representation in the rankings with 69 universities included – almost a quarter (23%)of the top 300 list.