'Will take time to be in top 100': IIT Delhi director on international rankings

NEW DELHI: Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are losing out on international ranking because we are narrowly focused on engineering, IIT Delhi Director V Ramgopal Rao said on the eve of the 52nd convocation. “We are not comprehensive enough when it comes to university ranking. Will take some more time to get into the top 100. In terms of academic programmes, we are following what the National Education Policy (NEP 2020) talks about, multi-disciplinary education,” he said.

Addressing the press conference, Ramgopal Rao said, “In the QS World University Rankings 2022 edition, IIT Delhi was featured among the top-200 world institutions with an improved rank of 185 amongst 1300 globally ranked institutes. Rankings have improved and will only get better.”

IIT Delhi has secured 54th rank in Engineering & Technology Category in QS World Rankings by subject (2021). However, he said, “One of the reasons why we are losing out on international ranking is because we are narrowly focused on engineering.”

Also read | IIT Delhi needs to reach a budget of Rs 2,000 crore per year: V Ramgopal Rao

“We are not comprehensive enough as compared to other foreign universities, especially in the US. Therefore, with all the steps we have taken to become more comprehensive and rankings will only improve,” the IIT Delhi director said.

“In the last five years, we have launched a total of 10 new academic units starting from the School of Public Policy and we are also recruiting faculty members aggressively, he added.

Along with the 10 new academic units, IIT Delhi has also launched 5 new BTech programmes, 8 MTech degrees, 2 MSc courses this year.

Also read | IIT Delhi establishes state-of-the-art laboratories at Centre for Automotive Research, Tribology

In terms of other rankings, the Institute has also been ranked 45th in QS Asia University Rankings, 2022 Edition. “I am also pleased to share that IIT Delhi has secured an NIRF rank 2nd in Engineering and 5th in Management respectively,” the director said during the convocation ceremony today.

Talking about the gender ratio in IITs, he said that IIT Delhi is doing much better compared to other universities. The institute had conducted a workshop for women after the JEE Advanced 2021 and briefed them as to why they should take admission in IIT Delhi.

This year 1508 postgraduate students (non-PhD) and 453 PhD students have been admitted to IIT Delhi. We have 16.56% girls in the undergraduate programmes and 25.30% overall.

Speaking about resuming offline classes, the director said, "By November, we will have the first-year students attending in-person classes, and by January 2022, we are expecting to go back to the normal mode of teaching, of course following all the precautions."