02:43
Aru2012
For those who have followed the INDIA TODAY-Nielsen Survey of India's Best Colleges since it first began in 1997, the identities of the topranked colleges in each of our six subject streams will perhaps come as no surprise.
The battle for the top 10 ranks is usually fought by the same group of colleges, with only an occasional gatecrasher spoiling the game of musical chairs played by the elite.
The continued domination of a select few institutions is not necessarily a bad thing. Higher education needs a dose of institutional elitism as separate from an elitism that denies equal opportunity and access.
Becoming a member of an elite club should become an aspirational goal for those on the outside. The insiders must strive to improve to maintain their status. That motivates the pursuit of excellence in the system as a whole. That is what leads to academic excellence.
Catching up with the best requires time, not least because it takes much longer to acquire a reputation than to actually construct the physical infrastructure on par with the best. Some of India's finest colleges like St. Stephen's, Delhi; Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi; Presidency College, Kolkata; and Loyola College, Chennai were set up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Their creaking infrastructure may not compete with what a new private university can offer, but their reputations precede the buildings, libraries and broadband.
Reputations formed over long periods of time matter not just in India. Oxford and Cambridge have continued to be the preferred destinations of British undergraduates for eight centuries. Harvard has been the top choice of American undergraduates for almost four centuries. But there is a difference.
In the US and the UK, the elitism of Oxbridge and Harvard prompted other institutions to rise to the challenge and compete-the LSE for example or the MIT and Stanford; there are many more, less famous names which provide comparable education without the brand. In India, there has been stagnation.
It should not be that way. There is plenty of room for many more institutions of excellence. In 2011, only 15 per cent of those Indians who complete secondary school will actually enroll in a college for higher education. The global average is close to 25 per cent; in advanced economies it is close to 50 per cent.
The country doesn't seem to have enough quality higher education institutions to cater to the demands of even this 15 per cent, never mind the 85 per cent who are yet to demand it. In the 2011 IIT-JEE, five lakh students competed for just over 9,600 seats. Out of every 50 students that appeared for the IIT-JEE, 49 competed for engineering in-stitutes other than the IITs, BHU, Varanasi and Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad.Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/best-colleges-in-india/1/144067.html
The battle for the top 10 ranks is usually fought by the same group of colleges, with only an occasional gatecrasher spoiling the game of musical chairs played by the elite.
The continued domination of a select few institutions is not necessarily a bad thing. Higher education needs a dose of institutional elitism as separate from an elitism that denies equal opportunity and access.
Becoming a member of an elite club should become an aspirational goal for those on the outside. The insiders must strive to improve to maintain their status. That motivates the pursuit of excellence in the system as a whole. That is what leads to academic excellence.
Catching up with the best requires time, not least because it takes much longer to acquire a reputation than to actually construct the physical infrastructure on par with the best. Some of India's finest colleges like St. Stephen's, Delhi; Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi; Presidency College, Kolkata; and Loyola College, Chennai were set up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Their creaking infrastructure may not compete with what a new private university can offer, but their reputations precede the buildings, libraries and broadband.
Reputations formed over long periods of time matter not just in India. Oxford and Cambridge have continued to be the preferred destinations of British undergraduates for eight centuries. Harvard has been the top choice of American undergraduates for almost four centuries. But there is a difference.
In the US and the UK, the elitism of Oxbridge and Harvard prompted other institutions to rise to the challenge and compete-the LSE for example or the MIT and Stanford; there are many more, less famous names which provide comparable education without the brand. In India, there has been stagnation.
It should not be that way. There is plenty of room for many more institutions of excellence. In 2011, only 15 per cent of those Indians who complete secondary school will actually enroll in a college for higher education. The global average is close to 25 per cent; in advanced economies it is close to 50 per cent.
The country doesn't seem to have enough quality higher education institutions to cater to the demands of even this 15 per cent, never mind the 85 per cent who are yet to demand it. In the 2011 IIT-JEE, five lakh students competed for just over 9,600 seats. Out of every 50 students that appeared for the IIT-JEE, 49 competed for engineering in-stitutes other than the IITs, BHU, Varanasi and Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad.Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/best-colleges-in-india/1/144067.html
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