Why is there not a single Indian university within the world's top 100 index list?

为什么世界前100强大学中没有印度学府?

QUORA网站读者评论：

Balaji Viswanathan, Indian by Birth. Indian by Thought.

1. Lies, Darn Lies and Rankings

As soon as I saw that Iowa State University and Indiana Univerisity ranked way above any of the top Indian institutes, I was curious to see the methodology [1]. 

1.They ignore any institution that does not have enough undergraduates. That means institutions such as IIMs, ISB IISc and IISERs are out of contention.

2.How "international" the campuses are. Given various impediments, our universities don't admit a lot of overseas students.

3.How much research income the university receives. We don't have a big culture of research grants and corporate funding for research. US universities get copious grants from NSF, NIH, DoD, etc apart from corporations such as Google, GE, IBM and Fedex.

4.Volume of citations and research volume. This is 60% of the score. Unlike the Universities in US and Europe with all academic disciplines, India emphasizes more on the specialized institutions built around a single theme such as technology, management, sciences or medicine. That means the volume of research will be small, given that each of our institutions are way smaller in terms of staff & students. For instance, IIT Kanpur has about 5000 students, compared to Iowa state university's 32000. When it comes to faculty, the ratio could be close to 1:10.

1. 谎言，该死的谎言和排名

当我看到爱荷华州立大学和印第安纳大学的排名远远高于印度顶级学府时，我很好奇，很想知道到底是怎么评比的[1]。

1.他们忽视了任何没有足够本科生的学校。这意味着印度国际管理科学研究院、印度商学院、印度科技学院和印度科学教育研究所等机构就无法参与评比。

2.这些学校的“国际化程度”如何。由于种种障碍，我们的大学并不会招收很多留学生。

3.大学能获得多少研究经费。我们没有研究资助和企业研究资助的浓厚文化。除了谷歌、GE、IBM和Fedex等公司外，美国大学还能从国家科学基金会、国立卫生研究院、国防部等机构获得大量的资金。

4.引文量和研究量。这占到评比分数的60%。与拥有所有学科的美国和欧洲大学不同，印度更偏向于围绕技术、管理、科学或医学等单一学科建立专门的教育机构。这意味着研究的规模很小，每个机构的在教职员工和学生人数都要小得多。例如，印度理工学院坎普尔分校大约有5000名学生，而爱荷华州立大学有32000名学生。在师资方面，这一比例可能接近1:10。

译文来源：三泰虎    http://www.santaihu.com/46905.html       译者：Joyceliu

The next time you see rankings published for anything, take it with a lot of salt. They are all manipulated.

That said, although the rankings overstates the problem, we do have a problem of education quality.

下次你再看到任何东西的排名时，要多辩证思考一下。这些排名都是被人为操纵的。

虽然如此，尽管排名夸大了问题，但印度教育确实也存在质量的问题。

2. Problems with Indian Institutions

• Lack of endowment culture: In the US and Europe, alumni give back to their university in the form of grants, donations and sometimes their entire property after death (if they are a loner). This money is harvested in hedge funds, startups and other investment avenues make it constantly grow. Harvard alone has $32 Billion in its endowments [2]. Stanford has about $16 billion, Yale about $19 billion. This money funds new infrastructure, research and faculty. In contrast, entire expenditure on higher education in India by the government is about $3 billion/year and all expenses on all education is about $10 billion [3].
• Top Indian institutions are young. Almost all reputed universities in the UK and US are over a century old. Oxford was founded in 1167 AD, Cambridge in 1209, Harvard in 1636, Yale in 1701, etc. That means they have an accumulated benefit of centuries of wisdom, alumni, infrastructure and international reputation. It takes time to build your name and alumni. India's top institutions are only decades old (first IIT came in 1951).
• Focus on professional education. India's top priority when it comes to higher education is to educate enough of engineers, doctors and managers. This is because we need enough nation builders given our state of the economy. At this stage of development (with a per-capita income hovering around $1200/person/year) it is wise to put your money on educating professionals than research (can be a super-expensive game in many fields that needs a bigger chunk of our meager budget). Indian educated students are a core part of the research elsewhere and they could be the conduits of tech transfer in the future.
• Poor school education. I have taught/graded undergrads as a TA for 4 semesters in my gradschool. Given a better schooling system, the undergrads in good US universities come better prepared and get better resources through TAs. Indian institutions often get unprepared students from our poorer schools and it takes a lot of effort for our professors to make many of our undergrads realize the importance of computing.
• Poor payment to faculty. In India, being a professor is not that attractive a job. A good software engineer could earn 4X of what a faculty at IIT earns. Given the poor payment and horrible politics, people tend to assume that you had no other option before you joined as a faculty. This self-fulfilling vicious cycle provides us poor faculty (both in payments and quality) although I know of plenty of really committed faculty who are stand out.

2.印度高校存在的问题

• 缺乏资助文化：在美国和欧洲，校友在死后会以赠款、捐赠或者有时甚至捐出他们的全部财产（如果他们没有亲友）的形式回馈大学。这些资金来自对冲基金、初创公司和其他投资渠道，不断增长。仅哈佛就有320亿美元的捐赠资金。斯坦福大学大约有160亿美元，耶鲁大学大约有190亿美元。这些资金用于资助新的基础设施、研究和教职员工。相比之下，印度政府在高等教育方面的全部支出仅为每年30亿美元，所有教育方面的所有支出约为100亿美元[3]。
• 印度的顶级学府还很年轻。英国和美国几乎所有著名的大学都有一个世纪以上的历史。牛津创建于公元1167年，剑桥创建于1209年，哈佛创建于1636年，耶鲁创建于1701年，这意味着他们已经积累了数百年的智慧、校友、基础设施和国际声誉。学校名声和校友资源的建立需要时间的累积。印度的顶尖机构只有几十年的历史（第一个研究所诞生于1951年）。
• 专注于专业教育。印度高等教育的首要任务是培养足够的工程师、医生和管理人员。这是因为考虑到我们的经济形势，我们需要足够的国家建设者。在这个发展阶段（人均收入徘徊在1200美元/人/年左右），明智的做法是把你的钱花在培养专业人士上，而不是研究上（对我们微薄预算中许多有更多资金需求的领域，那可能是一个太过昂贵的游戏）。在印度受过教育的学生是其他地区研究的核心，他们可能就是未来技术交流的渠道。
• 学校教育质量不佳。我作为助教在我的母校教了4个学期的本科生。美国一流大学拥有更好的教育系统，他们的本科生可以做好更充分的准备，通过助教获得更好的资源。印度的教育机构经常从我们一般的院校招收一般的学生，我们的教授们需要付出很多努力才能让我们的许多本科生认识到计算机的重要性。
• 教师的收入太低。在印度，大学教授并不是一份有吸引力的工作。一个优秀的软件工程师可以挣到一个研究所教师4倍的收入。因为报酬太低，政治环境也很糟糕，人们往往认为你是别无选择才会成为一名教师。这种自我实现的恶性循环为我们提供了差劲的教师，尽管我知道有很多真正一心教学的教师一直在坚持。

Anonymous

Anonymous because I don't want my teachers to read this and black mark me.

Background: An engineering student in a good college (comes in top 50 or 100 depending upon rankings. Not IIT, NIT) affiliated to a good university in India

Because no one does their work properly.

匿名是因为我不想让我的老师看到我写的这些文字后把我拉黑。

背景：印度一所一流大学附属学院的工科学生(根据排名，前50或100名的学校。不是印度理工学院，也不是印度理工学院)。

因为没有人好好工作。

1.Teachers don't teach properly. They project something on the board, blabber something, take attendance and go away. Frankly, there are 2–3 teachers who teach properly per department. I don't know why teachers can't teach. In my college, teachers are paid a very high salary and have only 1 or 2 courses to teach per semester. They have plenty of holidays and additional vacation. Still they don't teach. I don't know why. I hate the attendance criteria. Why are we forced to attend stupid classes when we can read the same from textbooks?

2.University examinations - The syllabus is so huge and everything in the world is included in one syllabus. Nil practical knowledge. Lab exams are a cakewalk. Maxmum grade is awarded to most students in labs. Project mark depends upon how well you flatter the staff. Then comes the local author books full of low quality content and rubbish from which most of us study. Examination time table is stretched for a month which further gets postponed. Vacations cut short. Paper evaluation is a joke. I still don't understand how I can get a C for an exam I wrote well and a B for an exam in which I made many mistakes. Getting internship is easy if you have influential relatives.

So at the end of all this, students lose interest. No research takes place. Nothing is contributed towards technology. Most students in my class are writing GRE and CAT. I too want to get out of this stupid country. Being a female, parents have issues with that too. I can get married and go it seems. Thanks for the trust!

1.老师教得不好。他们往黑板上投影一些内容，稍微解说一下，点个名就走了。坦率地说，每个系只有2-3位老师教得还不错。我不知道为什么老师教不了。在我就读的大学里，老师的工资很高，每学期只有一到两门课要教授。他们有很多节假日和额外的假期。他们还是不好好教。我不知道为什么。我讨厌出勤率。当我们能从课本上学到同样的东西时，为什么还要逼我们去上那愚蠢的课呢?

2.大学里的考试——考试大纲非常庞大，世界上的一切都包含在一个考试大纲中。没有一丁半点的实践知识。实验室考试轻而易举。在实验室里，大多数学生都能获得最高分数。项目的成败取决于你对老师有多巴结奉承。然后是本地作家写的书，内容质量很差，很垃圾，我们大多数人都学过。考试时间长达一个月，然后又要延期。假期被缩短了。论文审核简直就是一个笑话。我仍然不明白我考试时答得不错怎么只得了个C，考试时错了很多时还能得个B。如果你的亲戚很牛，那么找个实习岗位是很容易的事。

最后，学生们失去了兴趣。不会进行任何研究。不会对技术有任何贡献。我们班大多数学生都在准备GRE和CAT。我也想离开这个愚蠢的国家。作为一名女生，父母对此也有意见。看来我可以结婚，可以走了。感谢您的信任!

Nishant Koul, A mouse in the rat race.

They make the best employees. Not the best engineers by a long shot.

To be a good employee, you need to know your profession just enough to be able to get the job done, but not well enough to be actually be able to innovate or come up with an original idea.

The entire program at IIT is focussed towards making you an authority-loving person, who would do anything the authority-figures want them to do, even with unreasonable deadlines. Those are the kind of people which employers love to hire and those are the people who are rewarded in this system.

Why do you think employers look for a good GPA while hiring ? It's a measure of how much shit you can put up with without complaining.

他们会是最好的员工。但绝对不是最好的工程师。

要想成为一名优秀的员工，你需要对自己的专业有足够的了解，才能够把工作做好，但又不需要太过了解，这样才能进行创新或提出原创想法。

印度理工学院的所有专业都是为了让你成为一个热爱权威的人，成为一个愿意做权威人士想让他们做的任何事情的人。这些人是雇主喜欢雇佣的人，这些人在这个体系中会得到回报。

为什么你认为雇主在招聘时会看重GPA呢?它只衡量你能忍受多少狗屁而不抱怨。

All our role models in IIT are people who get great jobs, rather than people who do great research or people who tread off the beaten path and start their own venture.

Every first year knows that their dream is to get into Schlumberger and Barcap, even when they don't know the first thing about them.

Till the time we start respecting and rewarding individuality, rather than churning out conformist students trying to do their best in the rat race, we will continue to ship out a whole bunch of cheap skilled labour to the rest of the world, and be known just for that.

我们在印度理工学院的所有榜样都是那些找到了好工作的人，而不是那些做了出色研究的人，或者那些走了寻常路、自己创业的人。

每一个大一新生都知道自己的梦想是进入斯伦贝谢和巴克莱资本，即使他们对这两家公司一无所知。

直到我们开始尊重和奖励个性，而不是在激烈的竞争中培养出来的墨守成规的学生，我们将继续向世界其他地方输出大量廉价的熟练劳动力，仅此而已。

Abhishek Singh, Just Wondering !

Short answer would be our very own Education System .

Lets Break It down :

Since the time of British Rule , We have only escalated the number of institutions offering Higher education (IITs,IIMs etc .) , but didn't focus on the quality of it .

At the same time students scoring marks has increased like anything (many of my friends have nothing less than 90% ) . All are running the rat race to attain the highest possible number of marks .

Once there was a time wherein everyone out there wanted to become a civil servant, only a few who were really interested pursued their dream.

Now we are running pretty much the same way , but now the name of marathon has changed to "Becoming an Engineer" . No one studies for the sake of knowledge but for the sake of attaining a degree/a job.

That was the backdrop , the reasons of not having world class universities are many , to mention a few  :

简单地说就是我们自己的教育体系。

让我们来分析一下:

自英国统治以来，我们只增加了提供高等教育的机构(印度理工学院、印度国际管理科学研究院等)的数量，却没有关注其质量。

与此同时，学生的分数也在不断提高(我的很多朋友的分数都不低于90%)。所有人都在进行激烈的竞争，以获得尽可能多的分数。

曾经有一段时间，每个人都想成为公务员，只有少数人真正追求他们感兴趣的梦想。

现在我们还是差不多，只不过现在马拉松赛的名称变成了“成为一名工程师”。没有人为了知识而学习，只为了获得学位/工作而学习。

这就是当时的背景，没有世界级大学的原因有很多，举几个来说:

1.No Academic Freedom: Here in India we don't have that trend of "Be what you wanna be" . You can't pursue what you wish to , but you pursue what you are asked to . The institutions in the west have a really flexble curriculum. And that is what makes them better than us .

2.No Research facility : This is where we have the major problem . We have a very less focus on research,which is because of a less qualified faculty (Compare faculties from our universities and the Nobel laureates . we can't ), infrastructure , equipment's .

3.Innovation: In my view foreign universities (i mean their students ) featuring in the global top 100 are Creative , Innovative , have an out of the box thinking . This Innovation comes from the above mentioned points , when we have an academic freedom and an outstanding research facility and flexble environment to apply our thoughts .

We focus more getting jobs , they create jobs . Majority of students here , think of getting into Microsoft ,While the students there create Facebook , YouTube . That's being Innovative !

1.没有学术自由：在印度，我们没有那种“做你想做的事”的风尚。你不能追求你想要的，但你可以追求你被要求去追求的。西方学校的课程设置非常灵活。这就是为什么他们比我们优秀的原因。

2.没有研究设施：这是我们面临的主要问题。我们对研究的关注非常少，这是因为我们合格的师资力量，基础设施，设备都比西方少。

3.创新：在我看来，进入全球百强的外国大学(我指的是他们的学生)都具有创造性、创新性、有创新思维。这种创新就源于以上几点，如果我们拥有学术自由，优秀的研究设施和灵活的环境，就能实现我们的想法。

我们更关注就业，他们创造就业。这里的大多数学生，都想进入微软，而那里的学生创建Facebook, YouTube。这就是创新!

4.Funding : Another major issue is that our Indian universities are far less funded than the west. The top 5-6 universities  of west combined have a budget which is more than our education budget .

5.Top Management : The selection of the top management in our univesities is much more political than on merit or expertise .

4.资金：另一个主要问题是我们印度大学的资金远远少于西方大学。西部排名前5-6的大学的预算总和比我们全国的教育预算还要多。

5.高层管理人员：我们大学的高层管理人员的选拔更多考核政治因素，而非任人唯贤或任人唯才。

Although there has been an improvement in our education system in the last decade (but i think that's very much little , and its nothing to rejoice about ! ).

What can be the solution : I think we are very much talented and can make wonders happen (which is why we see many Indians acquiring top roles in prestigious universities , companies & institutions ) , but only talent is not enough . It has to be exploited , Top universities like Harvard , CMU exploit there students . How ? By having World Class Professors and Institutions .

The Government needs to expand its thinking and fund more research institutions rather than rolling out shitty schemes like MNREGA etc .

We need to build a community, a generation of researchers and innovators to compete with best institutions around the world .

And I think this will definitely improve our ranking .

虽然在过去的十年里我们的教育系统有了很大的改善(但我认为这进步很小，不值得庆祝!)

解决方案：我认为我们非常有才华，可以创造奇迹(这就是为什么我们看到有许多印度人在著名大学、公司和机构获得顶级职位)，但只有人才是不够的。必须挖掘人才，像哈佛，CMU这样的顶尖大学挖掘他们的学生一样。那要怎么做？必须拥有世界一流的教授和机构。

政府需要拓宽思路，为更多的研究机构提供资金，而不是推出像国家农村就业担保法案等糟糕的计划。

我们需要建立一个社区，培养一代研究人员和创新者，才能与世界各地最好的机构竞争。

我觉得这肯定会提高我们的排名。

Kunal Rahar, studied at Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani - Pilani Campus

We have the IITs, law universities, medical universities, the IIMs, the IISERs and so on, each for a specialised field. We do not have comprehensive universities such as Stanford, Harvard, Tsinghua or NUS. Our older universities focus on the arts and sciences.

我们有印度理工学院，法律大学，医学大学，印度国际管理科学研究院，印度科学教育研究所等等，每个学校都专注于某个学科领域。我们没有斯坦福、哈佛、清华、新加坡国立大学这样的综合性大学。我们历史比较悠久的大学侧重的是艺术和科学。

1.Headcounts of the international students enrolled for degree programmes and the foreign faculty on the university rolls are considered important measures of internationalisation. The benefits of diversity on a campus are undisputed, but regulations do not allow foreign students to study in our premier institutes. We have to decide as a country whether we are willing to pay the price for it in terms of seats lost to Indians and the payout of globally competitive salaries to faculty.

2.Collaborative research and development with the space, defence and nuclear energy sectors, and industry in general. The IITs also routinely provide the government expertise on technologically challenging projects. This is not counted to rank the universities.

3.The IITs have also created the world’s largest free online repository of engineering courses. This is of no relevance to the ranking agencies, nor is the strong commitment of the IITs to affirmative action by bringing in the socially and economically backward students to the mainstream teaching.

4.With the pay structure of UGC, we can't get foreign faculty to teach here who may be good at few subjects. So this restraints the pool of good faculty which has to be indigenously procured.

1.学位课程招收的国际学生人数和大学名册上的外国教员人数被视为国际化的重要的衡量标准。校园多元化的好处是毋庸置疑的，但规定不允许外国学生进入我们的一流学府学习。我们作为一个国家，必须下定决心是否愿意为印度人失去的地位付出代价并为教师提供具有全球竞争力的薪酬。

2.与空间、国防和核能部门以及整个工业部门进行合作研究和发展。印度理工学院还定期为具有技术挑战性的项目提供政府专业知识。这在大学排名的考衡范围之外。

3.印度理工学院还创建了全球最大的免费工程课程在线资料库。这与排名无关，也与印度理工学院通过将社会和经济落后的学生纳入主流教学而对平权行动的坚定承诺无关。

4.由于教资会的薪酬结构，我们无法聘请擅长某些学科的外籍教师来教授学生。因此，就只能局限于本地的优秀教员了。

So you see, we are not that worse off either. Just that the ranking parameters are biased towards the west.And yes we are slowly improving upon the above mentioned factors too and very soon we would be one among the best, just like we were once in the history with Taxla and Nalanda and Puspagiri.

所以你看，我们也并没有那么糟。只是排名的考核参数偏向于西方。是的，我们也在上述因素的基础上慢慢提高，很快我们就会跻身一流水平，就像我们曾经在历史上与塔西拉、纳兰达和普斯帕吉里一样。

Shashank Kumar, CS Undergrad, IIT Roorkee, 2009-13

If the colleges would be judged only on its quality of students, IITs might be in par with most world class engineering colleges. IITians are making a difference all over the world.

There are a lot of parameters on which an engineering college is evaluated to get overall rating. Most important ones are infrastructure, faculty, research, teaching, placements.

Infrastructure: IITs have a decent infrastructure but not a world class one. A simple example is we used to get wrong results in electronic practicals because of faults in machines.

Faculty - frankly most of professors just don't know how to teach or they lack enough knowledge.

Research - the quality of research done by faculty is poor. They are more concerned with publishing more number of research papers in any conference than a good research paper.

Teaching - already discussed.

如果只根据学生的质量来评比这些学院，印度理工学院可能与大多数世界级的工程学院不相上下。印度理工学院的学子们正在世界各个角落大有作为。

一个工程学院要想获得总体评价，需要评估很多参数。最重要的是基础设施、师资、研究、教学和实习。

基础设施:印度理工学院的基础设施不错，但不是世界顶级水平。给个简单的例子，我们的电子实践经常因为机器故障而得出错误的结果。

教师——坦率地说，大多数教授不知道如何教学，或者缺乏足够的知识储备。

研究——教师的研究质量很差。他们更关心的是在某个大会上发表更多研究论文，而不是精雕细琢一篇高质量的研究论文。

教学——之前已经讨论过了。