The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has made it to the top 15 universities for the first time this year while India was ranked second in a list of 300 top universities in emerging economies, “making great strides” in the compilation topped by China.
In the latest ‘BRICS and Emerging Economies University Rankings 2017’ report released on December 1, China ranked first with 52 universities while India was on the second spot with 27 universities.
Anurag Kumar, director of the Indian Institute of Science, said that increased government science funding in recent years has enabled the university to enhance grants for new hires, invest in state-of-the-art infrastructure and encourage interdisciplinary research.
“The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) climbs three places to 26th, its highest ever rank, due to improved scores across all of the five pillars underlying the methodology,” said Phil Baty, editor of the rankings.
“In fact, India could soon overtake Taiwan as the second most-represented country in the top 200 of the table, behind China. Overall, India has 19 universities in the top 200, up from 16 last year, while Taiwan has 21, down from 24,” Baty said.
Compiled annually by ‘Times Higher Education’, the reports show Peking and Tsinghua universities in China held on to the two top spots for the fourth year running and China has a further four universities in the top 10.
Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, University of Cape Town and University of Science and Technology of China complete the top five rankings.
IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur has jointly shared 32 rank while IIT Madras is at 35.
While India and China were described as this year’s “winners”, the performance of the other BRICS – an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – was described as “waning”.
Source: The Indian Express