Careers360 World-class universities: What can India learn? | Page 2

World class
university
INTRODUCTION

“India needs at least
four or five world
class universities”
The quest to have an Indian name in the top honours list of any world
ranking is innate to any citizen. We examine what it takes to have a university
to figure in the global league…

by B Mahesh Sarma & Nimesh Chandra

W

Do we need a WCU?

“

In this issue, we attempt to examine
what constitutes a world class university and what can Indian universities learn
from them. The objective is to identify
the material basis for a university to be
called as world class. There is no dearth
of players who would like to be known as
world class. IITs have always been identified in popular press as world class.
Prof Venkat Rangan, Vice Chancellor,
Amrita University categorically states,
“India needs about 20 world class universities to be set up across the country
and they can be set up at a cost of say
20,000 crore rupees.” He puts the per
university cost at about 2,000 crores.

Where does india stand ?

On the other hand Prof Ved Prakash,
Chairman, University Grants Commission (UGC) weighs in with a different
perspective. According to him, world
class institutions which have comparable international counterparts, whether
Harvard, Cambridge or Oxford, cannot
be created ab initio. There is plenty of
literature on what constitutes a WCU.
Prof. Philip G Altbach, Director, CIHE,
Boston college has written extensively
on this. The World Bank has come up
with a report on the same (See http://
tinyurl.com/3jabhvj). Here is what we
found out...

e need four or
five such universities. I have
been saying for
some time that
if somebody can
manage to get about 4 billion dollars
(roughly Rs. 20,000 crores), one can
plan to set up such a university and make
sure that it succeeds in a big way.” This
was Prof. CNR Rao’s (National Professor, JNCASR, Bangalore)response to
a question on whether India needs a
world class university (WCU) and what
it might take to build one.

Each year, when the three global ranking
of universities namely, QS, THE and
ARWU are released, there is a usual
breast beating regarding the absence
of Indian universities anywhere near
the top. But this year the THE rank
was slightly different because Panjab
University, a new entrant, pipped usual
names like IITs, JNU and DU. The
discussions then shifted to what made
Panjab a better player than even the
IITs. Careers360 too weighed into the
debate (Read more at http://tinyurl.
com/mvjy5u8).

30

Careers

360

January 2014

Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology is the world’s
youngest top ranked institution