With IIT Madras' entry this year, four IITs make their place among Asia's top 50 universities

The QS Asia University Rankings has found out that Indian Institute of Technology-Madras has made it to the top 50 universities in Asia this year by jumping 13 places from its position last year. It is now ranked 43. With this, four IITs – Kanpur, Madras, Bombay and Delhi are featured among the top ones in Asia.

IIT-Kanpur gained 10 places to be ranked as the 48th university. Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru which remained India's best university with 33rd rank was closely followed by IIT-Bombay (35th rank) and IIT-Delhi (36th rank). If we go beyond the top 50, IIT-Kharagpur was placed 51st and two other IITs - Roorkee (78) and Guwahati (94) - made it to the top 100.

Delhi University (DU), which had got 91st position last year, jumped several steps and was ranked 66th. University of Calcutta was ranked 108th, a big jump from 149th last year, University of Mumbai (145), while Banaras Hindu University was placed at 155th position. Panjab University featured in the 251 to 300 bracket. Overall, like last year, National University of Singapore (NUS) has been ranked the best university in Asia, followed by University of Hong Kong.

The QS report has clearly brought good news for IITs, especially for IIT Madras. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, the Director of the institution said: "We are delighted to be listed in the top 50 Asian Universities. We have been focused on growing and improving our research, teaching and overall curriculum as part of our strategic plan 2020 and it appears to be paying off. We will persevere and do our best to move still further up in the Asian and global rankings in the coming years.”

When asked what are the points IIT-Madras is losing out on, P Sriram, Dean of Administration, said: “It is in the perception scores (results of surveys), especially, the academic perception scores. We have to make IIT-Madras more visible internationally and make our research strengths visible in a widespread manner in order to enhance our academic reputation score.”

With 23 universities in the top 350, India's performance was fifth best among the 17 countries featured in the list. National University of Singapore, University of Hong Kong and Nanyang Technological University took the top three spots in the rankings which evaluated 920 universities from Asia.

Notably, the rankings by British company Quacquarelli Symonds were expanded to include Asia's 350 best universities, an addition of 50 from last year. Methodological enhancements too were in place - staff with a PhD was included in the parameters. Academic reputation (30%), reputation among prospective employers (20%), faculty/student ratio (15%), citations per paper (10%), papers per faculty (10%), staff with a PhD (5%), proportion of international faculty (2.5%), proportion of international students (2.5%), proportion of inbound exchange students (2.5%) and proportion of outbound exchange students (2.5%) were the deciding factors for ranking the institutions.