IIT Delhi falls 11 spots in QS World University Rankings, IIT Bombay is India’s top university

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) slipped 11 spots in Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings 2020-21 released on Tuesday (June 9).

Notably, only three institutes from India managed to find a place in top 200 in QS World Rankings this year. The Indian institutes in the list are IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi and IISc Bangalore. It may be recalled that IIT Delhi was ranked 182 in 2019 and it fell down to 193 this year.

IIT Delhi director Ramgopal Rao tweeted a letter asking people not to trust the rankings blindly and share some facts. According to Rao, the QS Rankings consider International faculty and students in the institute which is very low for IIT Delhi. He added that in 2019 rankings international students were below the global median and there was a need to hire the faculty. Rao said that IIT Delhi needs to hire 69 international faculty and 820 international students to be close to the global median.

My take on IIT Delhi's QS ranking. Judge for yourself. Don't blindly trust the rankings and the newspaper headlines. Understand the facts. @iitdelhi pic.twitter.com/YU93f9U2uL

— V.Ramgopal Rao (@ramgopal_rao) June 10, 2020

The rankings are based on six indicators: academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty, faculty/student ratio, international faculty ratio and international student ratio, compilers of the rankings said.

IIT Bombay is ranked 172nd, while IISc is 185th and IIT Delhi is at 193rd place. A total of 21 Indian higher education institutions are in the top 1000. IISc is ranked as India’s best research university with a score of 100/100 on the ‘citations per faculty’ indicator.

Other IITs in the top 500 are: Madras (275), Kharagpur (314), Kanpur (350), Roorkee (383) and Guwahati (470).

Massachusetts Institute of Technology is ranked as the world’s best university, followed by Stanford University (2nd) and Harvard University (3rd).