Global Rankings of Higher Education Institutions and India's Effective Non-presence: Why Have World-class Universities Eluded the Indian Higher Education System? And, How Worthwhile is the Indian Government's Captivation to Launch World Class Universities?

AbstractThe present global higher educational milieu is typified by its preoccupation with rankings. The inter-connectedness that has resulted from globalization has facilitated methodisation of higher education systems the world over. The coming together of countless institutions on a unified platform necessitates the logic of benchmarking. The Indian higher education system is a formidable presence, at least with respect to the numeric strength of comprising institutions, as well as the mass of populace that it covers. This is all the more reason why shortfalls in the higher education system—which have come to be something of a platitude—are so disappointing. The Indian Government has recently made rousing proclamations to make good this deficit and recast the country as “knowledge economy”, purportedly by making higher education a top national agenda item and creating world-class universities. While this concern is welcome, there lies a significant distance between the value of comparative information and projects to launch world class universities that policy makers have not heeded. The systemic challenges that afflict the Indian higher education system are tied to its long colonial history as well as its present developing country status. Thus, it is important to identify how well the captivation with producing world-class universities serves the Indian higher education system, and the society at large. That is to say, does this preoccupation relate to the immediate socio-economic realities? The paper collates research on global rankings; reasons that explain India's effective non-appearance in global rankings of higher education institutions; and critique of the Indian Government's world-class universities project. The authors navigate the study largely through descriptive and critical syntheses of precedential published research