New Delhi: The President of India Mr Pranab Mukherjee received yesterday (20 July 2016) a report on “State of Indian Universities in the Global Academic Rankings” from O.P. Jindal Global University and the Indian Centre for Academic Rankings and Excellence (ICARE) at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The report mentioned that Indian Institutions have performed well amongst the top 350 Universities from across 17 countries in the QS University Rankings Asia 2016. India has 5 institutions in the top 50 and 9 in the top 100. For the first time in the history of these rankings, all top 10 institutions from India have improved their positions. Surprisingly, nine of these institutions are led by the President as visitor with the 10th, the University of Calcutta being his alma mater.
The report also highlighted QS’s BRICS Rankings 2016. India continues to hold its position in the top 10 with IISC at Rank No. 6. India has 8 institutions in the top 50 which is the same as Russia and one more than Brazil. From 31 institutions out of 200 in the rankings last year, India today has 44 institutions in the top 250 of the QS BRICS Rankings 2016. The University of Delhi has improved its ranking by rising from 46 last year to 41 this year.
Commenting on India’s capability on research production, India is in the Top 10 Research Producing Nations Globally. The report revealed that in a decade and a half, India has produced over 1.4 million Research Papers attracting a massive 8.5 million Citations (7.4 citations per paper). During the same period, the Indian Scientific Community filed 4.6 Lakh Patent Applications. A total of 1,29,481 scientific papers were published by Indian authors in 2015.
Speaking on the occasion, the President recalled that while assuming the Office of President of India four years back, he had described education as the alchemy that can bring India its next golden age in his acceptance speech. The President expressing happiness over the work being done to raise the standards of Indian universities. He said he was confident many Indian institutions and agencies engaged in scientific research and development will soon reach the top position in the world.
