Only one institution from India has made it to the top 500 in the ACWU 2011 rankings, which is prepared by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has made it to the list at a world ranking of 301-400.
The ACWU rankings are based on several parameters such as Nobel Prizes awarded, medals won in different fields, articles published in journals like Nature and Science and indexed in the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). Another important component is the frequency with which researchers from the universities are cited in top journals.
The move comes at a time when the IITs have been subjected to strident criticism from several quarters for lack of research.
Earlier this year, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had created a storm after questioning the quality of faculty and research at IITs and IIMs. In May this year, he said, “There is hardly any worthwhile research from our IITs. The faculty in the IIT is not world class. It is the students in IITs who are world class. So the IITs and IIMs are excellent because of the quality of students not because of quality of research or faculty".
IIT Kharagpur has made a dramatic drop in the rankings in the last few years. In 2008, IIT Kharagpur was ranked at 301-401, while in 2009 it was ranked at 402-501.
The list is topped by universities in the US: Harvard University tops the list.
Among the top 10 are Stanford (2), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (3), University of California-Berkley (4), Cambridge University (5), California Institute of Technology (6), Princeton University (7), Columbia University (8), Chicago University (9) and Oxford University (10).
Separate lists for the top 100 universities in specialised fields were also released. IISc secured a rank of 76-100 in the top 100 engineering and technology universities, and a rank of 49 in Chemistry.