Research pays for Indian universities

Asian universities may rank lower than western ones on many research-linked parameters in global listings but their researchers make more money when adjusting their earnings for a currency’s real purchasing power, also known as purchasing power parity (PPP). These are the findings of the World Academic Summit Innovation Index, compiled for the first time by Times Higher Education ahead of its inaugural World Academic Summit in Singapore in October.

The results show academics from South Korea to be the most commercially valuable, with companies investing nearly $100,000 each in South Korean scholars to conduct research on their behalf. Singapore came second, with researchers earning an average $84,500 each. The Netherlands was third ($72,800) and South Africa came fourth ($64,400).

Nine Asian countries feature in the table, with five of their institutions in the top 10 — more than any other continent. Taiwan ranks sixth ($53,900), China is seventh ($50,500) and India ranks 10th ($36,900). In contrast, Canada ranks 13th, the US 14th and the UK 26th.

The index first converted all cash values into US dollars, then used PPP to factor in the cost of living in each country featured in the study, adjusting the value per researcher up or down to make it relative to a currency’s purchasing power.

Though India is ranked the fifth most commercially valuable country in Asia, and 10th globally, the three Indian institutions featured in the Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings 2013 survey — IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Bombay and IIT-Roorkee—are all ranked below 226.

“While many Indian institutions struggle to perform strongly across all of our rankings indicators, which are dominated by research performance indicators, they do have a strong and proven track record of working successfully with industry,” Phil Baty, Editor-at-Large, Times Higher Education, said in an e-mailed reply.
“Indeed, this is one of their great strengths…on a more level-playing field (after PPP) with the developed world, India’s IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) do very well indeed,” Baty said.

“It would seem that in recent years, the world’s increasing enthusiasm for technological advancement and computer science has seen big business shift its attention eastward to Asia,” the report said. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), for instance, collaborated with Samsung Electronics Co. to develop the world’s first humanoid robot, Mahru-Z, which receives its intelligence from a wireless computer. Scientists at the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) showed off their so-called invisibility cloak by making a cat and a goldfish vanish.

The top three
Technology executives believe the US, China and India are the top three countries with the potential to drive technology breakthroughs in the next four years, according to the 2013 Global Technology Innovation Survey released by consultancy KPMG Llp in July. Moreover, India ranked second as an innovation centre, as the third most promising nation for disruptive breakthroughs, and the fourth friendliest technology innovation country.

Regardless, India has a long way to go. For one, India dropped two places to 66 this year on the Global Innovation Index 2013, released in July. The index ranks 142 countries on their innovation capacity and efficiency and is published by Cornell University, INSEAD, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Since 1947, India has achieved self-sufficiency in foodgrain production, launched a space programme that has enabled satellite launches and a moon mission; has an autonomic energy programme; indigenously developed missiles and aircraft; and exports biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and information-technology services.

Yet, India lags other key countries in research investment and output. Global investments in science, technology and innovation were estimated at $1.2 trillion as of 2009. India’s spending on research and development (R&D) is less than 2.5% of this, and under 1% of its gross domestic product (GDP).

The relatively low share of Indian papers in the top 1% of journals — one of the parameters used for assessing the global impact of a country’s science and technology system — has always been a concern. India ranks 9th in the number of scientific publications and 12th in the number of patents filed. India requires, among many other policy-based actions, larger investments in R&D and more full-time equivalent R&D professionals, say experts.

China increased its share of researchers from 13.9% in 2002 (8.1 million researchers) to 19.7% by 2007 (14.25 million), while India’s share fell from 2.3% in 2002 (1.16 million) to 2.2% in 2007 (1.55 million), Thomson Reuters said.

To be sure, India has declared increasing its gross domestic expenditure on R&D to 2% of GDP as a national goal in the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2013. But to achieve this, the government will have to encourage more academia-research-industry partnerships, promote inter-disciplinary research and create a national scientific temper, say experts.

Source: Mint, August 12, 2013

President wants more centres of excellence

Emphasising the need for more centres of excellence and wider vocational training, President Pranab Mukherjee urged the country’s universities to take upon themselves the task of encouraging research in key areas to ensure that the country’s population could become an asset and not a liability.

Mr. Mukherjee was delivering his convocational address at a privately-run Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Phagwara, near Jalandhar, where the Afghanistan President, Hamid Karzai was conferred an honorary doctorate degree. As many as 7801 regular and distance education students received their degrees.

Despite a legacy of Takshashila and Nalanda, none of the Indian universities figured in the top 200 across the world, Mr. Mukherjee said expressing concern, “Outstanding personalities who won Nobel prizes were Indians but working in Universities outside India.”

When every year the country was adding 12 million work force, Mr. Mukherjee advised education institutions to take advantage of technology and utilise “out of the box thinking” for innovative measures to introduce more vocational courses. He said it was unfortunate that less than seven percent of the total workforce had received vocational training.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Karazi, expressed concern that years of strife had led to a situation where his country suffered due to lack of higher education. He said that living up to the expectations of a friend, India has given 2000 scholarships to Afghan students. He said that India had also gone beyond its means to provide a two billion dollars aid for rebuilding Afghanistan.

In his message to students, Mr. Karzai said, “You are the citizens of India and citizens of the world and you represent a country that is fast rising in economical, industrial and social growth. Your presence is felt all around. Keep progressing and at the same time, remember your culture and use your energy for the country’s welfare”.

Punjab Governor Shivraj V Patil, presided while Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, was the guest of honour for LPU’s third convocation.

Source: The Hindu, May 22, 2013

Only 3 IITs among top 100 universities in Asia

Only three institutes in the country, all of them Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), feature among the top 100 universities in Asia, according to the first Asia University Rankings released by “Times Higher Education” magazine.

While IIT-Kharagpur is ranked 30th, IIT-Bombay is 33rd and IIT-Roorkee 56th, the University of Tokyo secured the pole position with an overall score of 78.3, followed by the National University of Singapore with 77.5, University of Hong Kong (75.6) and Peking University (70.7). The universities are ranked based on 13 performance indicators in teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

“We are very happy with the results, because we have been striving very hard to compete with global universities,” said IIT-Kharagpur officiating Director S K Som. “IIT-Kharagpur is a founder IIT, and we have started programmes other IITs haven’t.” IIT-Kharagpur had earlier launched Vision 2020 with the aim of joining the list of the world’s top 20 universities in science and technology. “We are focusing on research excellence, faculty excellence and industry linkages,” Som said.

Individually, the three IITs have done relatively well on industry income or innovation, and have secured moderate scores in the teaching and research parameters. All three have secured low scores in terms of international outlook, with none securing more than 20 points.

A comparison between the Asia and the world rankings shows that the IITs are a far cry from many of those above them on the list. Many of the top 20 institutions also feature in the top 100 list, whereas IIT-Kharagpur, the highest-ranked Indian university, is placed between 226 and 250 on the world ranking list. No Indian institution has figured among the top 200 universities in the world in recent surveys. IIT-Bombay is placed between 251 and 275 positions, while IIT-Roorkee falls between 351 and 400 ranks on the world universities list.

In sheer numbers, too, Japan, with 22 universities in the top 100 Asian institutions, Taiwan with 17, China with 15 and Korea with 14 have done much better.

Sudhir Chella Rajan, head, department of humanities and social sciences, IIT-Madras, said the rankings had to be taken with a pinch of salt as much of the review was based on perception, not actual output. “It is said that those with publicity departments do better,” he said.

Analysing the performance of India’s higher education sector for the London-based “Times Higher Education”, Pawan Agarwal, adviser for higher education to the Planning Commission, said “rapid growth in the face of staff shortages and declining per-student spending has affected standards, which is eroding public confidence in the value of Indian higher education”. He said to build a world-class academy, India must develop a group of multi-disciplinary research universities capable of world-class research in a wide range of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary areas.

To see the full list of top 100 Asian universities, please click http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2012-13/regional-ranking/region/asia?gclid=COT8-v6xxLYCFYx66wodlxAAuw.

Source: The Times of India, April 12, 2013

Number of "innovation universities" reduced

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has watered down its ambitious plans of setting up 14 new “innovation universities”. Not only has it dropped the numerical target, it has now reworked its concept to allow existing universities to be classified as innovation universities after a change in their governance structure. The reworked proposal is likely to be taken up by the Cabinet at its next meeting. Universities will not only have knowledge clusters, but also build linkages with research institutions and industry. These universities will focus on research-oriented innovations in design, development and delivery.

The Planning Commission, which is also working on some restructuring of the higher education sector as part of the 12th Five Year Plan process, suggested the change in the proposal. It now allows for existing universities and institutes to be upgraded to the status of universities for research and innovation after changes in governance structure. The Plan panel had raised objections to the idea of thematic universities, arguing that there are almost no world-class universities set up on a thematic basis. The MHRD has made it clear that even the theme-based universities will need to promote inter-disciplinary learning and research.

Over the last two years, there had been talk of setting up innovation universities focused on environment and ecology, culture and sports. However, none of these discussions progressed, even though several universities in the US and the UK expressed an interest in setting up innovation universities. There were apprehensions that resources would flow to the proposed innovation universities while the existing ones would not be helped to perform better. These apprehensions prompted the change in the concept of innovation universities.

The Sam Pitroda-headed National Knowledge Commission (NKC) had suggested that each of the 14 varsities be earmarked Rs. 200 crore (Rs. 2 billion) annually.

Source: The Economic Times, April 23, 2012

India ahead of China in quality of scientific papers

India is well ahead of China in the quality of its scientific papers, though it lags in growth in the number of papers, a study has revealed. The quality of papers is determined by the number of citations per article, and this has gone by 2 to 2.7 over the past five years for papers from Indian scientists, says the study done by Elsevier, a world-leader in medical and scientific publications. On the other hand, articles from Chinese scientists are found to have a citation factor of 2.2.

Michiel Kolman, Senior Vice-President of Elsevier in charge of global academic relations, said the company’s database also showed that India was steadily gaining global leadership in different research areas. An analysis of research leadership areas from 2006 to 2010 showed that India was a global leader in 159 research areas, against 130 for the previous five years.

Noting that “India is a science powerhouse in the making,” Dr. Kolman said the study had also shown that India had the greatest strength in chemistry: 38 per cent of articles in India’s 159 leadership areas fell under the broad category of chemistry. This was followed by engineering (15 per cent), biology and biotechnology (14 per cent), mathematics and physics (10 per cent), computer science (5 per cent) and medical science (4 per cent).

Dr. Kolman said Elsevier’s database showed that the current growth in the scientific articles from India came typically from universities rather than scientific institutions.

Source: The Hindu, January 6, 2012