Indian Psyche: As a rule we Indians are very proud of our achievements even if our achievements are way below World standards.
A typical example is the Indian Cricket Team we are so proud of, we yell and scream from roof tops saying we are the best and jam the social media like Twitter and Face book when we win the world cup and then the entire nation goes silent when the same world cup champions gets dudded in all three forms of the same Cricket when they go overseas. Suddenly when we lose we do not want to talk about cricket any more and are like ostriches with heads in the sand.
The hype about the IIT Brand is No Different :
As a Nation, Indians are so proud of IITs and IITians and they believe they are the Best of the Best. It is not uncommon at partied for IIT alumni to drop the IIT name and to receive compliments like, especially from ladies “OMG you must be a genius to get into IIT” .
No doubt that the Undergraduates from IITs are world class, and this fact can be attributed to the JEE and brilliant minds that get filtered by JEE .
Yet what can we say about the Global Rankings of IITs as Engineering colleges ? Pretty woeful if we look at publications. ( The intent here is not to offend any one or any section of the IIT Community but to distance myself as an alumnus and visualise the real value of the IIT Brand.)
However, in the ranking of Asian Universities all IITs being ranked both for 2011 and 2012. Here the ranking for 2011 are: IITK 36, IITD 37, IITB 38, IITM 43, IITKGP 48, IITR 56 and IITG 82 The rankings for 2012 are: IITB 34, IITD 36, IITM 46, IITK 47, IITKGP 56,IITR-65 and IITG 89 .
According the list of top 500 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ACWU) 2010 prepared by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University where the criterion is possibly different IISc Bangalore and IIT Kharagur come in the 76-100 bracket. No other IITs are there in the rank list. For the 2011 ranking only IISc is there in the same band and IIT KGP has disappeared.
There is yet another global ranking of Universities called "Webometrics Ranking of World Universities". The idea is " to motivate both institutions and scholars to have a web presence that reflect accurately their activities.
If the web performance of an institution is below the expected position according to their academic excellence, university authorities should reconsider their web policy, promoting substantial increases of the volume and quality of their electronic publications."
In respect of Overall Word Rankings IITM 454, IITB 576, IITK 646, IITD 846, IITR 1659, IIT KGP 1742, IIT Guwahati 2658
It must be also noted that there are many "smaller" institutions rated as higher than IITR ( between IITD and IITR) and between IITR and IIT KGP and so on.
Does not matter which list we are looking at IIT’s Global Rating is nothing to write home about despite having about 200,000 IIT Alumni flying the IITs Flag Globally.
Ravikumar Bhaskaran, a Ph.D. alumnus of IITM and a former Dean of IIT Kharagpur says: “IITs seem to be not too much concerned about their low rank among Global University Ranking in various surveys. Some of the Directors and faculty members of the IITs say that there is no need for anxiety as the IITs are after all only 50 - 60 years old compared to others ranked higher, which are much older. They ignore the fact, however, that many Universities which are relatively younger than the IITs in various parts of the World, notably China, have been ranked higher than the IITs in many such surveys. Even in National Rankings, Institutions like some NITs and even Private Universities like VIT just 25 years old) are coming within striking range of the older IITs in some of the surveys. It is quite possible that in another 5-10 years some of these Institutions may overtake even some of the older IITs unless the IITs take note of parameters on which Institutions are getting ranked in various surveys and try to bench mark themselves against the better Institutions and Universities in the World. The Ostrich kind of approach is not good for IITs.”
"Youth is on the march in Asia. Not only are four of the continent’s top ten universities less than 50 years old, but they are also among the leading institutions in the world for their age."
"Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), which is top in Asia for the second year in a row, is the youngest of all, having been founded only in 1991."
Kindly see the following as well:
The year of establishment is also given there in the ranking list.
Look at their world ranking and compare with the IITs in the same list!!
The Million Dollar question - Why is IIT ranking so low Globally?
If you remove the students who clear JEE to enter IITs from the equation, it becomes clear that IITs Global Ranking is a Reflection of quality of students recruited to do Post Graduate studies as well as the quality of IITs Faculty and their research capabilities. (The intent here is not to offend any one or any section of the IIT Community but to distance myself as an alumnus and visualise the real value of the IIT Brand.)
Let us look into this a Bit more:
IITM has 78 Patents in Five years. How does this compare to say MIT ?
MIT Study Finds University Patents Add Billions The study is first to document that university licensing stimulates investment and promotes jobs. It used investment information gathered directly from MIT licensees.
The study, which appeared in the Journal of the Association of University Technology Managers, reports that companies invest a minimum of $2 billion to $5 billion each year in order to market university inventions, Pressman said. Using 1994 U.S. Census Bureau figures, the average cost of a research and development job was determined to be $125,000. This means that "tens of thousands of jobs" are created before public sales as the result of this investment, Pressman said.
This being the case at MIT, HRD Ministry of India is now questioning the “Returns on Investment from IITs “which have been fully funded by GoI for well over five decades.
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