Denationalised Elites and Their Search for Global Ranking of Higher Education Institutions

India’s denationalised elites¹ seek global standards in higher education institutions (HEIs) and follow a “cosm­opolitan” view alienated from any res­ponsibility towards a “national-popular” will.² They reiterate that India’s HEIs need to follow publication standards of “the top 100 global universities.” Currently, India’s 35 HEIs figure in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) global ranking list and the older Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are within the first 400, whereas the top seven central universities are in the range of 500 to 1,200 ranks in the QS ranking. India Today rep­orts, “Only 22 Indian higher institutions found a place amongst the top 1,000 universities of the world.”³ Over the last five years, their rankings have remained unchanged. They continue to get scored poorly under the “faculty–student ratio,” even though they have improved their “academic reputation” and “citati­ons” marginally, which will be exami­ned later in the article. As the faculty–student ratio is critically weak in India, no Indian university appears in the top 100 ranks, the report adds.

However, India’s cosmopolitan elites are in great hurry to catch up with global standards as soon as possible. They argue that India’s search for global peers should benefit all students to make informed choices in their higher education. Their ideals of catching up with global standards, worthy as it may be, are empty rhetoric as their pathways do not add­ress the question of the limited choices available for most students and teachers in India. The purpose here is to explain the substantial differences between ­India and Western countries and the ­neglect of education by all political regi­mes since independence.