IIT unity plan for better rank
The Indian Institutes of Technology have fallen back on the old saying unity is strength after being ranked embarrassingly low among global universities for successive years. At a brainstorming session here today, directors and chairpersons of the 16 IITs discussed whether the tech schools should be projected as a single entity when agencies like the Times Higher Education, Quacquarelli Symonds and Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked institutions. If the idea is followed through, sources in the HRD ministry and some IIT directors said, the premier institutions were likely to score higher on parameters like volume of research, technology transfer, international students, international faculty and peer comment. “We are considering this idea that all the IITs will present themselves as one entity or brand. We are going to write to the ranking agencies on this,” higher education secretary Ashok Thakur said after the meeting. Only four IITs ranked among the top 500 world instituti