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Not a single Indian university has made it to the prestigious world reputation rankings 2015.  India with its great intellectual history and growing economic power does not have a single university that is regarded by academics globally as being among the world's most prestigious, according to the Times Higher Education (THE) rankings released on Thursday. 

The rankings is the world's largest invitation only survey of academics. Times Higher Education distributes the survey in 15 languages to over 10,500 academics in 142 countries. 

According to the 2015 list, Harvard in the US is the world's top university followed by UK's University of Cambridge (2nd) and the University of Oxford (3rd) which displaces Massachusetts Institute of Technology by one rank (fourth). 

Stanford in the US is placed at five and the University of California Berkley is sixth. The rest of the top 10 is made up of US institutions: Princeton University (seventh), Yale University (eighth), California Institute of Technology (ninth) and Columbia University (10th). 

London and Paris are tied for top spot as the world cities with the highest number of top ranked universities. US dominated the list with 43 universities in the top 100. UK has the second highest number of representatives in the top 100: 12 up from 10 last year and nine in 2013. 

Phil Baty, editor of Times Higher Education Rankings said "It is really a matter of concern that a country of India's great intellectual history does not have a single university that is regarded by academics globally as being among the world's most prestigious. 

Mr Baty added "At this stage the best performing Indian institutions in the reputation rankings are the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) - they have a strong reputation across the world. However, they are still not receiving enough nominations to make it into the top 100. India needs to support its leading institutions". 

According to him, strong universities are crucial for the success of developing nations - helping to retain top talent in the country and prevent brain drain, attract investment, develop highly skilled future leaders and create new knowledge and drive the knowledge economy. 

To be invited to take part, academics have to be published in a leading academic journal and respondents have an average of 15 years working in higher education. They are asked to nominate no more than 10 institutions that - in their expert opinion - they believe to be performing the most strongly for teaching and research. 

Mr Baty added that "There is no way of knowing why these academics are not nominating Indian institutions enough. It could be because Indian institutes are not attracting enough international students or staff, collaborating with overseas universities enough, or publishing enough research papers in English - the global language". 

"All of these factors can influence a university's reputation, so it is likely that by improving their international outlook Indian institutions can not only improve through sharing best practice globally and drawing on the global talent pool, they can also improve how they are perceived by the global academic community. Ultimately the only way to improve in the world reputation rankings is to ensure that scholars across the world recognise you as an excellent teaching and research institution," he added.

Image Courtesy : livemint