The Performance of Research-intensive Higher Educational

Institutions in India

Gangan PrathapCSIR-NIIST, Thiruvananthapuram

Science as a source of progress

During the 18th century, scientists convinced governments to finance their work:

1) science inculcates intellectual virtues like objectivity, logic and rationality in individuals

2) science drives socio-economic progress

Also, universities have for many centuries (Bologna 1088, Oxford 1096) been autonomous institutions, committed to teaching and research.

Outline for a History of Science Measurement, Benoît Godin

The assessment of Indian research

The scientific output measured in terms of articles published from the various states of India as registered by the Web of Science over a 3 year period (2007-2009) P, is taken as the output term.

The GDP of each state, in billions of dollar in 2009 ($Bn) is taken as the proxy for the input term

(http://www.economist.com/content/indian-summary accessed on 22 July 2011).

quality of scientific activity, the ratio of Output to Input,

q = P/$Bn.

This indicator usually favours small states at the expense of larger states where the law of diminishing returns sets in. Indeed, there will always be cases of high input but low output and therefore low quality, or low input and medium output but of high quality, etc.

It is therefore desirable to assess overall performance in terms of a single indicator.

output or outcome (O), an input of size Q,

to combine quality q with quantity Q and/or output O to yield a single indicator that is the best proxy for performance.

given an input (for quantity)

Q

output or outcome (for quasity),

O

quality, is defined as quasity/quantity

q = O/Q

indicator for performance becomes

X = qO = q2Q.

Q = $Bn (billion dollars of GDP),

and

O = P (papers published during 2007-2009).

q = P/$Bn

X = P2/$Bn.

X is a product of the quality and the quasity term and perhaps best represents the “performance” of each state on a per GDP basis.

State Number of Papers P

Tamil Nadu 17507Maharashtra 16577Uttar Pradesh 15843Karnataka 15156West Bengal 14471Delhi 14157Andhra Pradesh 9494Kerala 4559Gujarat 4094Madhya Pradesh 3835Punjab 3151Rajasthan 2814Chandigarh 2640Haryana 2555Assam 2210Orissa 2105Uttarakhand 1223Himachal Pradesh 1137Bihar 1019Jammu & Kashmir 988Pondicherry 875Jharkhand 698Goa 626Meghalaya 364Chhattisgarh 238Arunachal Pradesh 195Manipur 156Sikkim 124Tripura 96Mizoram 84Andaman & Nicobar Islands

77

Nagaland 68Lakshadweep 2Total 125619

TABLE I

TAMIL NADU IS RANKED FIRST ON THE BASIS OF THE NUMBER OF PAPERS PUBLISHED DURING 2007-09.

Tamil Nadu ranks 1st in India in raw output

States/UTsGDP $Billion

q = P/$Bn

Exergy X = P x P/$Bn

Chandigarh 4.1 643.90 1699902.44Delhi 36.1 392.16 5551818.53Puducherry 2.8 312.50 273437.50Karnataka 62.9 240.95 3651897.23Tamil Nadu 80 218.84 3831188.11Sikkim 0.6 206.67 25626.67Arunachal Pradesh 1 195.00 38025.00West Bengal 76.9 188.18 2723144.88Meghalaya 2.1 173.33 63093.33Andaman & Nicobar Islands 0.5 154.00 11858.00Uttar Pradesh 103.5 153.07 2425127.04Goa 4.2 149.05 93303.81Jammu & Kashmir 7.6 130.00 128440.00Himachal Pradesh 8.9 127.75 145254.94Uttarakhand 9.9 123.54 151083.74Assam 18.6 118.82 262586.02India 1081.8 116.12 14586922.87Manipur 1.4 111.43 17382.86Andhra Pradesh 85.7 110.78 1051762.38Kerala 41.2 110.66 504477.69Mizoram 0.8 105.00 8820.00Madhya Pradesh 37.3 102.82 394295.58Maharashtra 175.3 94.56 1567580.88Punjab 40.5 77.80 245155.58Orissa 31.8 66.19 139340.41Rajasthan 46.3 60.78 171027.99Haryana 44.2 57.81 147692.87Gujarat 80.1 51.11 209248.89Nagaland 1.5 45.33 3082.67Jharkhand 17.5 39.89 27840.23Tripura 2.6 36.92 3544.62Bihar 32.7 31.16 31754.16Chhattisgarh 22.7 10.48 2495.33Lakshadweep 0.3 6.67 13.33

TABLE II

ON A QUALITY BASIS (PAPERS PER BILLION DOLLARS OF GDP), CHANDIGARH RANKS FIRST.

ON THE SECOND-ORDER INDICATOR BASIS, DELHI EMERGES FIRST.

Delhi contributes 38% of India’s scientific output, while on GDP terms, it accounts for only 3.3% of India’s GDP.

TN ranks 5th in India in per GDP output

In economic terms, India was the world’s largest economy in the first millennium, producing a third of global GDP. By 1500 its share had declined to 25 percent, as China overtook it and Western Europe’s share began to expand rapidly. India’s share continued to fall after 1700.

Higher Education in Europe Bologna in 1088

Oxford in 1096

Europe adds 70 universities in 500 years i.e. 1 university/million population around 1500ADIndia and China? 0

The assessment of research-intensive Indian universities

Academic Ranking of World Universities

Shanghai Jiao Tong University published the first global university rankings.

2003 - Three Indian institutions appeared in the world rankings in 2003 (Indian Institute of Science in the 251-300 bracket and the Indian Institutes of Technology at Delhi and Kharagpur in the 451-500 bracket)

2013 - Only one remained! The Indian Institute of Science dropping down to the 301-400 bracket.

These research-intensive institutions belonging to the Higher Education sector are the biggest contributor to India’s academic research output.

Indeed in 2013, sixteen out of the top 20 research organizations in India ranked by output (SIR Global India 2013 - Rank: Output 2007-2011) belonged to this sector.

The Scimago Institutions Rankings (SIR) World Reports

(http://www.scimagoir.com/) The research performance of leading research institutions in the world is evaluated using bibliometric data from SCOPUS (www.scopus.com), an Elsevier product.

The bibliometric analysis is based on indicators addressing issues like

- scientific impact- thematic specialization- output size- international collaboration networks, etc.

A report for a year covers the output over a rolling window of five years previous to that year (e.g. the report for 2009 covers the period 2003-07). The institutions have been chosen on the basis of having published at least 100 scientific documents of any type, that is, articles, reviews, short reviews, letters, conference papers, etc., during the last year of the respective five year window as collected by Scopus.

Sl No.

State No.

1 Tamil Nadu 282 Karnataka 113 Uttar Pradesh 114 Maharashtra 105 West Bengal 96 Delhi 97 Telengana 78 Punjab 69 Rajasthan 610 Seemandhra 5

REST 41TOTAL 138

SIR 2013

12

RANK HEI in Tamil Nadu5 Indian Institute of Technology, Madras18 Anna University25 Annamalai University29 Christian Medical College, Vellore

30National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli

32 University of Madras41 Bharathidasan University47 Gandhigram Rural Institute49 VIT University51 Bharathiar University57 Alagappa University59 Madurai Kamaraj University72 Amrita University78 Kalasalingam University81 Loyola College88 Thiagarajar College of Engineering89 Sathyabama University

90Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy

93Sri Siva Subramania Nadar College of Engineering

103 PSG College of Technology106 Sri Ramaswamy Memorial University115 Sri Ramachandra University118 Periyar University120 Tamil Nadu Agricultural University132 Karunya University135 Government College of Technology

137Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University

138 Karpagam University

Indian Institutes X2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Indian Institute of Science - IISc

14,789

16,383

17,946

18,482

22,222

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur - IITKgp 8,919

10,585

12,051

13,243

14,817

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay - IITB 7,693 8,764 9,777

10,624

12,369

Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi - IITD 8,339 9,202

10,084 9,967

11,800

Indian Institute of Technology, Madras - IITM 6,902 8,235 9,619 9,873

11,574

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur - IITKnp 8,926 9,192 9,150 8,954

10,658

Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee - IITR 3,724 4,828 5,522 5,876 7,031Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati - IITG 1,756 2,376 3,143 3,586 4,640International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad - IIITH 121 187 245 383 352Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad - IITH 0 0 0 0 255

Table 1. The time evolution of the exergy indicator from 2009 to 2013 of the prestigious Indian Institutes.

Figure 1 shows the performance trajectories of the prestigious Indian Institutes from 2009 to 2013 on a quality-quantity two-dimensional map.

Figure 2 shows the performance trajectories of the Central Universities from 2009 to 2013 on a quality-quantity two-dimensional map.

Figure 3 shows the performance trajectories of the NITs from 2009 to 2013 on a quality-quantity two-dimensional map

Figure 4 shows the performance trajectories of the leading Medical Institutions engaged in research in India from 2009 to 2013 on a quality-quantity two-dimensional map.

Figure 5 shows the performance trajectories of some of the leading institutions in the private sector engaged in research in India from 2009 to 2013 on a quality-quantity two-dimensional map.

Conclusions

We have used datasets from the 2013 release of Scimago Institutions Rankings (SIR) World Reports (http://www.scimagoir.com/) to evaluate the longitudinal performance of the quality and quantity of research output of institutions belonging to the Higher Education sector for the period 2003 to 2011. These institutions taken together are the biggest contributor to India’s academic research output. In this paper we see that all institutions have a reasonable to high growth rate in terms of quantity of output. However, from the quality angle, we see that the high performers which are mainly the institutions of national importance are now at a relatively low growth level. We also identify a few institutions which are showing promisingly high rates of improvement in quality of research.