International rankings will influence quality assurance in next decade, says QS Regional Director

NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 15: One of the three prominent international ranking agency, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) is of the view that in the next decade, international ranking systems will influence the quality assurance and accountability. QS Regional Director Ashwin Fernandes speaking at the ‘Role of International Rankings in Indian Higher Education’ said that with more government policies focusing on quality assurance systems and academic standards this will gain prominence.

O P Jindal University organised a conference on the theme where a 10-point ambitious growth and reform plan for Indian Universities was also presented to enable them to achieve global rankings.

This plan was presented by the Founding Vice Chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University, Prof (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar and Ashwin Fernandes. Both of them emphasized on the need for Indian higher educational institutions to be at par with their international counterparts and also invest in strategies, vision and infrastructure to ensure they break into globally recognised international rankings.

“Global rankings have emerged as a dominant way of measuring their performance. There is today a serious debate on the need for Indian universities to be in the top 200 universities of the world and the urgency of seeking reforms that will pave the way for promoting excellence in higher education and research. It is important that Indian universities embrace the international rankings framework as well as international accreditation processes which will benchmark Indian universities with the world class universities in many countries,” explained Prof (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar.

He added that today, the Times Higher Education World Universities Rankings, QS World University Rankings, and the Shanghai Jiatong Rankings have become part of the institutional aspirations for many universities and higher education institutions in India, he said. “The challenges related to higher education in India deserve urgent attention and require determined responses.

“In the next decade, international ranking systems will influence the quality assurance and accountability with more government policies focusing on quality assurance systems and academic standards. The scholar community should actively enter debates about the assessment of academic standards and the design framework and the use of rankings and ratings. Due to the simplicity of their representation of evidence and sophisticated validation measures, these exhaustive quantitative methodologies will be accepted as reliable measures in redefining the overall quality and accountability in higher education,” said Ashwin Fernandes.