On Tuesday, QS World University Rankings were released, in which Delhi University occupies the 18th spot in the category of development studies, the highest achieved by an Indian varsity in the sixth edition of the subject-focused listings. The Indian Institutes of Technology, however, continue to be the most ranked Indian institutions, with IIT-Bombay featuring 14 times in the rankings and seven times among the top 100.
The rankings were decided on the expert opinion of 76,798 academics and 44,426 employers along with the analysis of 28.5 million research papers and over 113 million citations.
IIT-B features in 14 subject tables being the country's pre-eminent university, while DU stands at 18 in development studies. IIT Delhi is in 45th place in the electrical and electronics engineering list. The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, weighs in at 47th for materials science.
From 2015, there is an increase as Indian universities occupy 114 places among them, last year it was 107. However, given QS's decision to continue expanding their rankings and make this year's edition it's most inclusive ever, India's share of places as a proportion drops marginally from 1.29% to 1.25%. Its head said that excellence can be found in increasing number of places. Nations like Austria, South Africa, Finland, Brazil, China, and Sweden can be found in the top ten of our tables. Their new rankings acknowledges academic ex cellence in 27 different countries, while our top 100 for mineral engineering recognizes it in 26. Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology continue to dominate global rankings, each taking 12 leading positions among 24 subjects.
As per, Dr Karthick Sridhar, vice-chairman, Indian Centre for Academic Rankings and Excellence, these rankings focus on the excellence of those institutions that cannot be included in the overall world ranking due to their specialist focus. He further said that even our President has encouraged the institutions to proactively engage with ranking agencies and provide the required data for global benchmarking initiatives.