- As we are aware, the craze for any average parents in India to send off their wards to foreign shores for pursuing education – higher and/or professional – hasn’t stopped one bit over the decades despite domestic educational infrastructure making some progress. However, the facts in our face cannot dispute the realities that we are way behind in the pecking order to even be considered among the top hundreds. It won’t be fair not to mention the persistent efforts shown by the successive governments – both at the Centre and the states – to invest in sprucing up the education sector over the last few decades. Undeniably, India as a nation is still taking nascent steps to compel its citizens not to look for foreign shores for their wards’ higher education.
PC: India TV News
- The moot point to ponder over here is why we continue to be lacking in giving a fillip to the educational infrastructure in line with the aspirations of the modern-day ambitious exponents looking for quality education. Reading the global university rankings in toto reveals that India is walking forward while others are sprinting. Sometimes, in India, we celebrate without much sense of proportion. Cheering an IIT for getting ranked 118 in the QS World University Rankings 2027, and some other Indian universities are also moving up, definitely has a frog-in-the-well feel. It’s like saying, okay, we have passed for a middling exam performance in the most cut-throat jobs era in history. For the individual child, this is 100% the right attitude.
PC: gbcode.rthk.hk
- Gently encouraging, not putting too much pressure. But national higher education warrants a completely different kind of accountability. Tough, analytical, benchmarked to the best. And there, what is unmissable is that the University of Hong Kong is ranked 11, and Peking University is 13. The big picture is the same across different rankings. Yes, India’s representation is rising. But China’s universities have pushed into the global elite. Indeed, Western universities are growing worried about how they’re becoming less attractive to Chinese students, and the billions they bring. Nor is China the only uncomfortable comparison. Per QS data released in March, tiny Singapore has two universities in the top 10 for engineering and tech. Amazing.
PC: GK Now
- University rankings serve as a rough proxy for a country’s ability to generate new knowledge. China’s share in Nature Index, which tracks high-quality academic journals, is now more than the US’s, and 21 times India’s. If we consider the AI research landscape, yes, India’s contributions have risen substantially. But China has made a dramatic ascent, expanding its global share from under 5% in 2000 to a completely dominant 36% by 2025. Chinese universities have leapfrogged on the back of governance structures that enable liberal international hires, quick research initiative launches, and building capacities at speed. We must follow suit. We should be more ambitious, more demanding, more willing to learn from those who have raced ahead. Work hard and smart.
