The Hindu Business Line : Why India must invest in intellect

India's competitiveness will, in the final analysis, depend on how well the human resource compares with the best in the world. But none of India's over 200 universities and 2,400 colleges figures in the top 200 rankings. This can be remedied by encouraging academics to publish in top journals and, more importantly, by using some of the vast forex reserves to disburse fellowships to carefully selected candidates for study abroad. The results of such initiatives will be visible soon enough, says Bhanoji Rao.

AT THE time of the formation of the Indian Republic, the country had 208 colleges for professional education (offering programmes in engineering, technology, architecture, medicine and education) and just about 27 universities, which included deemed universities and equivalent institutions of national importance. The numbers zoomed to 2,409 and 208 respectively by 2001-02.

As providers of high-level manpower in a wide variety of areas, these institutions preside over the development destiny of the country and, as such, their reputation for academic excellence has vital significance. Moreover, the reputation has to be reckoned in the world context, given that globalisation is here to stay and given that the country's competitiveness in goods and services will, in the final analysis, depend on how well our human resource compares vis-à-vis the best in the world.

A simple question to ask is the position our higher educational institutions occupy within the framework of an appropriate global ranking scheme. A search on the World Wide Web reveals that in contrast to the relative abundance of B-school ranks (within the US and across major world regions), global university rankings are relatively scarce, except for one laudable attempt, that too most recent.

The exceptional work on academic reputation rankings for 2004 has been the effort of a small team of researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. They covered the major higher educational institutions in the key regions of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America and produced a ranking for the top 500 (see methodology).

The results are startling in regard to geographical concentration. Among the top 100 institutions, 51 are located in the US. The UK is second, with 11. The rest of the 38 institutions are distributed as follows: Germany (7), Japan (5), France (4), Canada (4), Sweden (4), Switzerland (3), Australia (2), the Netherlands (2) and Austria, Denmark, Finland, Israel, Italy, Norway and Russia (one each).

India (with over 200 universities and 2,400 professional colleges) does not find a place in the top 100, and not even the top 200. Singapore, with just two state-funded universities, has one in the top 200 and one in the top 400.

In terms of the top 500, India could secure just three places: Indian Institute of Science in the top 300; and IIT, Kharagpur, and the University of Calcutta in the top 500. (Note: The top 500 includes China's 16 and South Korea's 9 within the total of 89 from the Asia-Pacific.)

Though it is all a matter of winning Nobel Prizes and publishing in top journals, one could find fault with the conceptualisation and precision of the rankings. Some scholars might even exhort: "to hell with international reputation".

The vast majority of parents and students, as well as enlightened leaders, however, may wish to see our institutions climb to find a place in the top 100 in terms of quality and reputation, notwithstanding the limitations inherent in any ranking method.

As for attempts to build world-class reputation among the institutions in India, we need two parallel initiatives on a large scale. First, academics in universities and comparable institutions should be given proper incentives to publish in top international journals. There is nothing at all wrong in launching national journals and publishing in them such research results as are vital to national concerns. These, however, should be considered as complementary to first-rate theoretical and applied research geared for publication in the top journals of the world. It is not either-or; it is both.

Second, there is a need to build the future scholars in sufficiently large numbers, not to serve the US or Europe but India. We need a large-scale scheme of overseas scholarships.

The following are two key elements of the scheme: a generous $100,000 fellowship disbursed over three-four years to each of the carefully selected candidates from the top post-graduate students, provided they obtain admission to a doctoral programme in top-ranking US/European institutions; and a bond to serve for at least six years in a pre-selected university upon completion of overseas study, with due safeguards and penalties for default, etc.

We have $120 billion in the pot. The Government could spend a billion a year for a few years in a row for the worthiest of the causes. The billion dollars will provide annually 10,000 overseas doctoral fellowships.

In three years, with an overall investment of $3billion, the country would have invested in around 30,000 young and highly rated academics — an average of 150 per university or comparable institution.

In all probability, our reserves will keep growing. The billion-dollar overseas doctoral fellowship scheme could continue for a long time.

Within a decade or two the results will be visible — even in monetary terms since overseas students would now select India to study and international service providers will set up shop in India since the top brains are here.

The methodology

THE ranking scheme is based on the following items and weights:

Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10 per cent);

Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20 per cent);

Number of highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories (20 per cent);

Number of articles published in Nature and Science (20 per cent);

Total number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index (20 per cent); and

Academic performance (based on the aggregate score on previous items) standardised with respect to the size of staff in the institution (10 per cent).

There are also weights within weights. For instance, for alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, full 100 per cent weight is accorded for alumni obtaining degrees in the decade of the 1990s (1991-2000).

The weight gets reduced to 90 per cent for alumni obtaining degrees in the 1980s... and 10 per cent for those whose degrees are of the 1901-1910 vintage. There is a lot of sense in this, since reputation must be more in relation to current achievements and not some "historical monuments".

A similar sub-weighting scheme was used for staff obtaining Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics and the Fields Medal in mathematics. Full weight (100 per cent) is applied if staff in the institution won the prizes/medal during 2001-03. The weight gets reduced by the decade and reaches 10 per cent of the full weight if the awards were won during 1911-20.

Institutional rankings also depend (to a tune of 20 per cent) on the number of highly cited researchers in 21 subject categories in life sciences, medicine, physical sciences, engineering and social sciences. These individuals are the most highly cited within each category for the period of 1981-1999.

Similar ranks (with a weight of 20 per cent) are also taken on the basis of the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index in 2003.

The total score from the aforementioned five indicators is divided by the number of full-time equivalent academic staff. This average indicator gets a weight of 10 per cent in the aggregate score used to rank the universities and comparable institutions.

(The author, formerly with the World Bank and the National University of Singapore, is Professor Emeritus, GITAM Institute of Foreign Trade, Visakhapatnam. He can be contacted at bhanoji@vsnl.net)