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As a country with many colleges, with a lot of them being touted as the next big thing, isnt it surprising that none of them, not even our IITs or IIMs feature in world rankings? I would definitely say it is. Everyone has the students convinced that getting into these institues guarantees a succesful and wholesome future for yourself. You will get placed at a good company or you can become an entrepreneur. Either way, the hype around these places is built on the haloed pillar of prosperity. And to an extent, they aren?t wrong. So why aren?t they well ranked, globally? Lets take a look at the criteria needed for these rankings and understand the different sectors in which our deficiencies lie.

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Most of international rankings have the following criteria:

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1. Population of students ? the rankings ignore universities that don?t have a significant number of undergraduate students. This kicks out most of our IITs and IIMs from the race. What about students studying subjects like arts or commerce or law in different universities? It turns out that the number of these students in India is still quite less, way lesser than the ones who have chosen engineering or medicine. Let?s not forget that the arts and humanities are still stigmatised and people think of these degrees as quite worthless. Added to that is the fact that a lot of the top universities usually belong to countries that are already developed nations. More students have access to education. The youth living in the villages of our country aren?t even lucky enough to get a decent school education, let alone colleges.

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2. Presence of International Students ? the rankings also consider how international a particular campus is. Excepting our big universities, most of our institues don?t admit many overseas students.

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3. The Amount of Research Grants Received ? there isn?t such a thing as a consistent culture of grants and funding for research in India. We do have it but its not enough for us to get featured on a global list. Whereas for most universities in countries like the US or the UK, various departments of their administration and corporations provide large endowments to educational institutes.

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4. Quantity of Research Volume ? this constitutes almost 60% of the score. Most Amerian and British universities (I mention these countries because their institutes occupy the top positions in such rankings almost every year) have all academic disciplines being taught in the same campus. In India, we tend to have colleges that are specialised in single subjects, like science, medicine, law, technology or management. This reduces our research volume since our institutes are smaller.

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Now that we?ve seen the criteria for the rankings, lets try to understand in depth why we lag in so many sectors.

• The lack of a funding culture prevents many initiatives from taking shape in our country. Although our current Prime Minister is certainly doing a lot more than what his predecessors did in this sector, it still isnt enough. Most of his efforts appear to be concentrated on emerging startups and some institutes as well but not much on education per se.
• Most of our reputed institues are definitely younger than places like Harvard or Yale. The latter have the benefits of years of accumulated patronage, funding, celebrated alumni and infrastructure.
• Our economy is in such a state that our government is driven to encourage most professional courses like engineering, medicine and management. This is good because we need more people who will build our nation. This hinders the development of other courses, often leading to a stigmatisation of them, especially the humanities and commerce.
• The quality of education imparted in our schools isnt that great. It appears our students are usually ill prepared for colleges and the work that is demanded of them. Thus our professors are required to put in great effort to make many students understand the basics.
• Finally, being a professor in this country isnt the most lucrative option. There is also the fact that a lot of undeserving professors get into their positions based on connections and influence. As someone who has actually been taught by such professors, you can only wonder who they knew in order to get accepted into the teaching position.

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Our government is ultimately responsible for bringing in signifiant changes but that can only happen if the people in power prioritise the imparting of quality education to our youth over other things.

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