After Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World Rankings 2022 named The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru as the world’s top research university, making it the first higher education institute in India to attain a perfect score in the ranking assessment, academia resonates on making more Indian Institutes go global. Rather attract international students in more numbers.
Dr. V. Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT shared an internal memo which he had earlier mailed to his team at IIT Delhi about the challenges being faced by premier institutes like IITs when it comes to admitting more international students and in the process ‘prominently figuring in these World University Rankings’.
An internal email I sent at @iitdelhi on World University Rankings and performance of our institutions in WURs is making rounds in the media. Here is the full email text for those who wish to know the full story. Govt is working closely with the institutions through IoE. pic.twitter.com/2PQ2wWcKRH
— V.Ramgopal Rao, Ph.D. (@ramgopal_rao) June 11, 2021
In his mail Prof. Rao, refers to the ranking patterns which is largely based on reputation based surveys and highlights certain challenges faced by IITs :
- Talent crunch – Challenges in finding good faculty, ramping up a team of faculty can not be done
- Recruiting International Faculties – is not possible due to policy paralysis as the jobs at IITs are mostly Govt. jobs and limited to Indians.
- Falling Faculty Students Ratio : due to large numbers of intakes through various quotas.
- Attracting international students : While IITs are attracting international students at PG / PhD levels, the door is almost closed for UG students as the admissions depend on JEE scores which again is at a very high competitive level.
“But we can’t do this at the cost of scores of Indian students who wish to come to these institutes but are denied. India simply needs to create more high quality institutions so the pressure on IIT admissions comes down” said Prof. V Ram Gopal Rao.
