Read rankings properly, don’t slam IISc: Balaram

Bengaluru: Professor Balaram, former director, Indian Institute of Science, took the stage by storm on the final day of the Global Alumni Meet, saying institutes can neither take blame nor credit for how they fare in global rankings. “These rankings are immediately picked up by the press and everybody from the President to students to Professor C.N.R. Rao lament that IISc is doing badly, that there is no Indian institution in the top 200,” he said. “Then, we set for ourselves a vision and that vision is that in five years, we will be in the top 50.”

He was referring to a local newspaper report, which in turn was taken from an article in Nature magazine, that claimed India is doing poorer in research than Kenya. “Why is India worse off than Kenya? Any index that you have has a numerator and a denominator. Very often, the denominator in these indices is the population of the country. There of course, India has a very, very large denominator. If an institute has to reach the top, what is the environment in which it is embedded?”

Prof. Sunil Kumar, Dean at the Chicago Booth School of Business, said in his speech, made prior to Prof. Balaram’s, that his university is very young. This is relative to veritable cornerstones of learning like Harvard and Oxford. “By that measure, IISc is even younger,” said Prof Balaram. “But in India, IISc is one of the oldest. How has it evolved in the last 100 years? How has the century treated the institute and the country? This is something we all must look into.”

What are the problems that any director of the institute is likely to run into in the future? “Prof. Anurag Kumar is not here, but my sympathies are with him,” he said, causing a ripple of laughter within the audience. “Sometimes, newspapers don’t even read the ranking systems correctly,” he said, caustically. “It had been reported that IISc had dropped 120 positions in the Shanghai rankings. Ten years ago, there were three Indian institutes on the list – IISc and two IITs. Today, only IISc remains. In the current conditions, we need to run very, very hard to stay in the same place.” Higher education commands a booming market, driven by relentless competition. The ranking of a university or the state of higher education depends largely on the atmosphere within which it grows and the encouragement it receives. “Institutes with greater resources, greater public and government support will race ahead. How does an institute function? Indians living abroad appear to have a greater influence on the policy of the country than the Indians living here,” Prof Balaram said. “A rally held in Madison Square Gardens has a much greater impact than a protest held at IISc. I request those of you who have come from North America that your influence extends very far. It is not only your purse, but also your position, the places that you occupy in universities that are higher up in rankings than IISc. Your word will count. Tell the powers that be how important it is to support institutions that have survived under very difficult conditions.”

The Indian institute's four-year undergraduate programme began, he said, “as an experiment in higher education”. When it began in 2012, the government barely acknowledged its existence, it ran quietly, almost unnoticed by the country.

“When it ran into a political storm at Delhi University, the very term, ‘four-year-undergraduate programme’ took on a very bad connotation. Universities were forced to change the name or sometimes even curtail the programme. In fact, the only thing that AAP and BJP agreed on during the Delhi elections was that four-year progammes were very bad! Political parties are doing their bit, every one of them, to downgrade the sphere of higher education in the country.”

Engineering programmes were cut from five years to four. Science programmes, however, were not cut from three to five. “Four-year courses were labelled professional; every other course is thereby unprofessional by implication. IISc is the only institution that can carry out these experiments.”

Funding for science is definitely on a downward spiral – “the Indian economy is not as good as it should be,” he admitted. “There isn’t that much money coming in to Indian institutions. We are in for a more difficult time, so we must be more realistic and pragmatic in addressing where we want to go, and how we want to raise the resources.”