The best and the most successful universities across the world are autonomous and they pursue their own mission and determine their own future, noted Toby Linden, lead education specialist, South Asia Education, the World Bank, in his presentation ‘The Indian education – status and way forward’ at the inaugural function of the National Summit on Quality in Education organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The event was held recently at Christ University, Bangalore.
Quoting a Shanghai World University Ranking report, he said there were two Indian universities in the top 500 in 2009, while only one Indian university made it to this list in 2014. Indian universities may ignore such reports completely as they are deeply flawed because the indicators are crude and narrow measures of quality. Even the data gathering mechanisms are questionable, he said.
Despite this, he noted that such rankings are important for everybody as they provide a wealth of information. He remarked that India has many elite institutions and they should be able to compete with the world’s best. However, their rankings are low as the required data is not available in the public domain. Hence, adopting a system, what he termed as THESIS (The Higher Education System for Information about Success) may help Indian institutes attain higher rankings. They may provide information about on-time graduation rate for students, budget from various sources, number of students, degree of autonomy to drive institutional improvement and quality and so on, he added.
