Of Universities and The Express
Posted by admin | Filed under Uncategorized
The Indian Express made my day today with this wonderful headline:
No Indian Universities in global toplist so UGC has a solution: let’s prepare our own list
The article goes on to elaborate how NAAC(National Assessment and Accreditation Council) and UGC(University Grants Commission) are whining about this situation. NAAC says that the criteria used by rankings such as The Times rankings or the Shanghai Academic rankings, is biased and does not take into account social conditions.
I am surprised at the way these bodies are getting worked up about rankings. Granted students do consult rankings while deciding where to study, and so when you are looking to appear as an International educational hub, it does help to have colleges in these lists. But last I checked, India’s is going bonkers trying to set up enough IIT’s so that a larger section of Indian’s can attend these august institutions. So why bother? And social conditions…? If I am a parent looking to send my kids to a college abroad, would I send him to a good college in Afghanistan because it is doing well in the backdrop of violence, social stigma and poverty? Probably not(though I must say I would personally love to attend school in such a context). So, just because India is a developing country, with a huge population, low literacy and poverty, doesn’t mean it makes sense to consider these as factors to rank colleges worldwide.
And if the reason for this concern is that you want to be the best, then UGC and NAAC should stop complaining about the rankings being biased on such grounds and figure out what makes the universities that do figure in these lists click.
June 16th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
hmm. informative )
June 29th, 2009 at 1:11 am
nice! i’m gonna make my own blog