Daybreak - Indian universities are done being backbenchers in the global rankings race

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

For an Indian university, a spot on the QS Rankings list could change everything. It would mean they belonged to the same elite club as the Cambridges and Oxfords of the world. But to nab that spot, universities are stopping at nothing — from admitting more foreign students, to paying top dollar to hire consultants and purchasing seats at conferences. But in the process some fear these universities are neglecting their bread and butter — academics. How did we get here? What's behind this growing obsession with climbing up the global ranking ladder? Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

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For an Indian university, a spot on the QS rankings list could change everything. For the uninitiated, these are a set of annual rankings that compare the performance of universities around the world. I'm sure many of us have checked out these rankings at some point. Perhaps even after the all-important board examinations, when we had to decide which colleges we wanted to go to. Now, for a lot of us, the Indian colleges that actually made it to the list were purely aspirational. These were a handful of legacy universities that generations of Indian students aspire to go to, the likes of the IITs and the IIMs. The fact that these universities made it to the QS rankings actually added to their exclusivity.

It meant they belonged to the same elite club as the Cambridges and Oxfords of the world. But today, things are different. You see, it isn't just the bigwigs whying for a spot on the list anymore. Today, climbing international rankings has become an important. important milestone for pretty much any educational institution worth their salt. And lucky for them, a lot of smaller, state-funded and public-funded universities actually stand a chance. In fact, from 11 institutes a decade ago, the number of Indian universities that have managed to make it to the QS rankings has gone up to 46. But this episode is not about the QS rankings alone.

It's actually about the growing obsession with rankings in general in the Indian higher education. landscape. You see, in the past eight years, the number of universities participating in India's own ranking methodology, the NIRF, has nearly doubled to 6,500. Even individual states want in on the action. They're releasing their own rankings. So what's with this obsession with rankings and the sudden fervor to rise up the global ranking ladder? Well, just take the case of Shulani University in Himachal Pradesh. Now, this is a university that has been around for 15 years. In the latest QR rankings, the university managed to climb nearly 200 places in one year to become the top-rated private university in India. And the university's founder and vice-chancellor,

Atul Khosla, told the Ken reporter Alifia Khan that the jump on the list made all the difference. To put it in his words, from not being able to meet even an assistant professor of a prominent university in the UK, they are now being hosted by their dean. That, Atul said, is the kind of impact that the rankings had on Shulini status as a university. But the thing is, a lot of academicians aren't too happy. They don't buy into the whole rankings frenzy. In fact, they fear it could harm universities and students in the long run more than help them. And they may be on to something.

Because today, Indian universities are willing to go to any length for a spot on these lists. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host Rahil Philippos and I'll be joining my colleagues, Nygda Sharma, every day of the week to bring you one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Tuesday, the 7th of December. In many ways, this growing obsession with rankings here in India

is similar to what played out in China a few decades ago. You see, we Ram Gopal Rao, the VC at Bix Pilani, told Alifia that the Chinese government linked scholarships to rankings. What that meant was that a university's ranking matters when a student wants to qualify for a scholarship. And that's what made universities hungry to climb the ranks. In 2003, China also introduced its own ranking system. They called it the Shanghai rankings.

While it started out as a way to rank local universities, about six years later, the agency was renamed as the academic ranking of world universities. And today, at least 2,100 global universities take part in it. Now, a lot of what India is doing. doing right now in the higher education space is what China did a decade ago. Things like increasing funding for research or focusing on rankings or even creating ranking agencies. You're probably wondering what's in it for countries like India and China. Well, apart from the obvious, improving the quality of these universities and holding them to a

higher standard, it also means a seat at a negotiating table. Take the case of Shulni University. Atul Khosla said earlier when he went to the ministry with the government, the proposal, he wasn't really taken seriously. But now, Shulmi is being asked to guide other universities. That's the kind of power that comes with a good rank.

But of course, moving up that ladder isn't easy. A big part of getting a good rank is understanding public perception about the university. And that includes a mix of both academic and employer reputation. Now, there's no denying that this is an important tool.

But like Nitin Karamalkar, former VC of the state-run Savit by Fulet Pune University told Alifia, it's not the most transparent process in most rankings. Universities and colleges often use surveys to steer the perception, which makes up nearly half the weightage in international rankings. In India's NIRF, that covers about 10% of the weightage. Now, typically, universities participating in rankings submit a list of people

who are added to the general pool of people helping an agency rate. The agency then floats surveys to a random set of people in their database. Sometimes as part of these rankings, people are asked to sign up to vote as well. But not all these votes carry equal points. A consultant who previously worked with an IIT explained. Say, if somebody in the US or UK votes for a particular university, that vote will carry more points than a vote from a local. So like I said a little while ago, it is not the most transparent system.

To navigate this hurdle and steer public perception, a lot of these universities have started engaging with consultants abroad who in turn are able to get people there to vote. And it doesn't stop there. There's also branding to take care of. In the last few years, even legacy institutions like the IITs and Bits have roped in marketing and PR teams. Just offering a solid education to students does not cut it anymore. And now everyone is feeling the pressure.

The sad thing is there are a lot of universities like state and public universities, universities that cannot afford to spend money on PR advisors or consultants. So naturally, private universities have a clear edge here. A lot of them have been employing consultants to up their rankings. Now, this includes big consulting firms, the likes of KPMG and TWC. The bouquet of services range from analyzing past years to identify pain points to strategy consultants that involve curriculum, research, hiring, engagement with alumni and surveys. In fact, the ranking bodies themselves sometimes play the dual role of an auditor as well as a consultant.

Some agencies offer paid services in the form of master classes, confidences and even workshops to teach universities how to score better. Some of these international ranking agencies literally sell insights for lakhs of rupees. And it's gotten to a point where now everyone is feeling the pressure. Even faculty and students. One way that universities improve their ratings and climb up the. the rankings is by amping up their research output. Just take Shulini University's example. It managed to significantly improve its citation per faculty or CPF,

which is a metric used to measure the volume and intensity of research at an institution. So Kossela and his team spent weeks tracking this metric. And he said because of this metric, he was even able to identify his most productive faculty in terms of research output. All of this sounds great in theory. But the thing is, a jump in terms of. research output, particularly at private universities, has always come under a lot of criticism because there have been allegations of these metrics being gamed. In fact, in the last couple of

years, several reports have pointed to fake paper mills in Asia, particularly in China and here in India, leading to many retractions. Here at the ken we have previously written about how easy it is for Indian universities to get pulled into citation cartels. Now, Khorsela say on the matter is that a few bad players need not necessarily mean that the entire system be dismissed. He said that a lot of strategic decisions at Shulni University are driven by rankings. Decisions like getting agencies to conduct surveys among students to assess their satisfaction or tracking diversity in each department. And therefore, it is important for universities to internationalize themselves. Atul's point of view is straightforward. All stakeholders should know

how universities are delivering, not just in comparison with each other, but also with the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the government is on another mission to drive up the gross enrollment ratio in higher education. And one big piece of that puzzle in their opinion is national rankings. Currently, only about 28% of the students enrolling for school education in India take up higher education. The government wants to double that to about 50% in the next decade. Now, that's a lot of, That means introducing more courses and more seats to all Indian universities. That again is both good and bad. Of course, it gives students a chance, sure, but it also means losing exclusivity.

Universities are modifying their admission criteria accordingly. Just take Pitsbilani, for instance. Its acceptance rate currently stands at 2% of the total pool of students who apply. So it's extremely difficult to crack. But at the same time, the university has also been trying to. admit more foreign students. The other thing is that very often different ranking agencies focus on different subject matters. For instance, environment has been a big one.

FD rankings took environmental, social and governance factors as a starting point back in 2021, and QS2 introduced five points for sustainability in its latest rankings. As a result of all of that, universities have started taking sustainability more seriously. They've been reducing their carbon footprint, designing smart campuses and even introducing courses on sustainability and ESG. Like one consultant told Alifia, the market needs students to be trained in ESG, whichever course they are studying.

In December, IIT Delhi topped the list of Indian institutes in QS sustainability rankings, followed by IIT's Kharakpur and Bombay. Other premier tech schools also managed to jump several spots within the span of a year. Now, amid all that hoopla, Institutes may overlook some other important parameters, just to stay alive in this race. For example, QS scaled down the role of teacher-student ratio in its latest rankings. Now, when these ranking bodies shift their focus from one parameter to the next,

the fear is that ranking-obsessed Indian universities will try to keep up. And again, the people who end up suffering in the process are faculty, and more importantly, students. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. Head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website. Today's episode was hosted by Rahil Filippo's and edited by Rajiv Sien.