QS World University Rankings 2016/17

Published : Thursday, 22 September, 2016 1:11 PM

QS World University Rankings 2016/17

IITs lose ground in latest QS World University Rankings

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London, 6^th September 2016 : The thirteenth edition of the QS World University Rankings, compiled by global higher education think tank QS Quacquarelli Symonds, has today confirmed Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the world’s best university for the fifth consecutive year. IISC Bangalore remains India’s highest-ranked institution, but drops out of the top 150. It is now ranked 152^nd;

IISC’s drop is symptomatic of the near-uniform drops faced by India’s tertiary institutions this year. Key findings include :

• 9 of the 10 Indian universities ranked 700^th or above drop this year;
• The one exception is IIT Madras, which breaks into the global top 250 after a five-place rise;
• No non-IIT or IISC features in the top 500 after the University of Delhi falls from the 481-490 band to the 501-550 band;
• 9 Indian institutions fall for both academic reputation and employer reputation;
• Four Indian institutions remain among the world’s top 100 for research impact, as measured by QS’s citations per faculty metric. However, this is one fewer than in the 2015/16 instalment. Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) drops eight ranks to 101^st for research impact. 
• IISC Bangalore is now ranked as the world’s 11^th -best research institution according to the citations per faculty scoring. Data for this metric is sourced using Elsevier’s Scopus database.

Ben Sowter, Head of Research at the QS Intelligence Unit, attributes India’s consistent falls to a number of factors. One such factor is India’s relatively low numbers of PhD-qualified researchers, which has a direct and deleterious impact on the research productivity and impact of India’s universities¹. This problem is exacerbated by India hiring and attracting fewer PhD-qualified researchers from abroad; Sowter further notes that no Indian institution ranks above 700^th for QS’s international faculty ratio metric.

Nine of India’s universities also fall for faculty/student ratio. This metric measures the ability of universities to maintain class sizes conducive to high-quality teaching. It therefore measures institutional teaching quality by proxy. This year’s findings suggest that Indian universities are still struggling to provide both the quantity of quality faculty members necessary to meet rapidly-increasing student demand². 

India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development continue to target further increases in Gross Enrolment Ratios for the tertiary sector³.  Consequently, QS IU note that considerable investment – both human and capital – remains needful if Indian institutions are to remain both competitive and upwardly mobile.

Sowter said : “This year’s rankings imply that levels of investment are determining who progresses and who regresses. Institutions in countries that provide high levels of targeted funding, whether from endowments or from the public purse, are rising. On the other hand, Western European nations making or proposing cuts to public research spending are losing ground to their US and Asian counterparts.

The performance of Indian institutions in our recent regional Rankings suggest that India is gaining some ground on its regional competitors. Though India is making substantial and commendable progress towards ensuring that more of its tertiary-age population have access to tertiary education, the global edition indicates that substantial challenges remain.”

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¹https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/understanding_india_report.pdf

²http://www.ey.com/IN/en/Industries/India-sectors/Education/Higher-Education-in-India--Twelfth-Five-Year-Plan--2012-2017--and-beyond

³http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/gross-enrolment-ratio-in-higher-education-zooms-115122200006_1.html
 

Elsewhere in the world, Stanford University displaces the University of Cambridge in the top three. This means that US institutions hold all top-three places for the first time since the inaugural rankings of 2004. Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan enjoy noteworthy improvements, while the United Kingdom, France, and Italy lose ground.

The full QS World University Rankings for 2016/17 can be found here and if you’re looking to meet face to face with admissions directors from top international business schools in India, join the QS World MBA Tour from 27th November to 8th December in a city near you. MBA aspirants can log on to www.topmba.com/renedezvous to find out more information.  

-Ends-

Notes for editors

Media contacts:

Simona Bizzozero

Head of Public Relations
QS Quacquarelli Symonds

simona@qs.com

pressoffice@qs.com

@qs_pressoffice

+ 44(0)7880620856 
+44 (0) 2072847248

Jack N. Moran

PR Executive
QS Quacquarelli Symonds

jack@qs.com

@JackNathanMoran

pressoffice@qs.com

QS World University Rankings ® 

The QS World University Rankings is an annual league table of the top universities in the world and is arguably the best-known and respected ranking of its kind. Compiled by the QS Intelligence Unit in close consultation with an international advisory board of leading academics, the QS World University Rankings ® is widely referenced by prospective and current students, university professionals and governments worldwide. The purpose of the rankings has been to recognize universities as the multi-faceted organisations they are and to provide a global comparison of their success against their notional mission of becoming or remaining world-class. The QS World University Rankings are based on four key pillars, research, teaching, employability and internationalisation and the methodology consists of six indicators: academic reputation (40%), employer reputation (10%), faculty student ratio (20%), citations per faculty (20%), international students (5%), and international faculty (5%).

http://content.qs.com/qsiu/Faculty_Area_Normalization_-_Technical_Explanation.pdf

Key facts and figures

• 74,651 academics and 37,781 employers’ responses contributed towards the results, making both surveys the largest of their kind in the world. 
• Over 3800 institutions were considered for inclusion this year and 916 ranked, 25 more than in 2015.
• 10.3 million papers indexed by the the Scopus/Elsevier bibliometric database were analysed, and 66.3 million citations counted which amounted to 50.4 million citations once self-citations were excluded

QS Intelligence Unit www.iu.qs.com

QS has been conducting research in a range of areas since 1990 beginning with a global survey of MBA employers. The QS World University Rankings®, the most established of the range of research projects that QS operates, have been in existence since 2004. To meet the increasing public interest for comparative data on universities and organisations, and the growing demand for institutions to develop deeper insight into their competitive environment, the QS Intelligence Unit (QSIU) was formed in 2008 as a distinct and autonomous department. Committed to the key values of rigorous integrity, unique insight, undeniable value and accessible presentation, QSIU strives to be the most trusted independent source of global intelligence on the higher education sector.

Ben Sowter

Sowter is the Head of Research at the QS Intelligence Unit. He holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Nottingham, where he was also awarded the Union Prize for outstanding contribution to the student union and served as chairman of the Nottingham University Debating Society. Ben is fully responsible for the operational management of all major QS research projects and is actively involved in all the collection, compilation and tabulation of all the data that lead to, amongst others, the World University Rankings research with which he has been involved since its initial inception in 2004. A frequent contributor to the press, Ben’s opinion on global education trends and his expertise is used regularly by major global publications.

About Scopus 

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and features tools to track, analyse and visualize scholarly research. Its comprehensive database contains 55+ million items indexed from 21,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers worldwide, ensuring broad interdisciplinary coverage in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and Arts and Humanities. Scopus was designed and developed with input from researchers and librarians and features direct links to subscribed full-text articles, other library resources and interoperability with applications such as reference management software. Scopus is part of the Elsevier Research Intelligence portfolio which includes the SciVal tools, the Pure system, rich data assets and custom Analytical Services.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions — among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey — and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 33,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries.

Global impact of the QS World University Rankings

IREG approval

QS Quacquarelli Symonds is the first compiler of global and regional university rankings to receive the “IREG Approved” label for three of its research outputs. The Observatory on Academic Rankings and Excellence (IREG) Executive Committee, at its meeting in Warsaw on 15th May 2013, decided to grant to QS the rights to use the “IREG Approved” label in relation to the following three rankings: QS World University Rankings, QS University Rankings: Asia, and QS University Rankings: Latin America. More information on its correct usage is available here.

The Global Innovation Index The QS World University Rankings has been used as one of the indicators for the GII since 2013. The QS ranking is the only ranking of its kind to be used for the study.  The GII is co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, a specialized agency of the United Nations).  The annual report consists of a ranking of world economies’ innovation capabilities and results.

The Bank of Communication Sea Turtle Index 

The Bank of Communications Sea Turtle Index was developed and produced by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which benchmarks the potential returns—academic, financial, and social—on an international undergraduate education in 80 cities worldwide. These were chosen first by clustering the top 300 universities from the QS World University Rankings into major cities, allowing for richer data and greater regional diversity in results. EIU analysts then used OECD statistics on the percentage of international students going to each country to decide on the number of cities to feature per country.

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