Seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) have taken a decision to not participate in Times Higher Education – World University Rankings this year. This is after confusion over the parameters and transparency in the rankings.

In a statement, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Guwahati, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras and IIT Roorkee said they have decided not to participate in any of the Times Higher Education (THE) - World University Rankings this year (2020).

This is a global ranking of educational institutions that is published on an annual basis.

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"These IITs will reconsider their decision next year if Times Higher Education is able to convince them about the parameters and transparency in their ranking process," said the statement.

Moneycontrol had reported in September 2019 that there were differences between IIT Bombay and Times Higher Education on the rankings.

In 2019, even as none of the Indian higher education institutes features in the top 300 in the World University Rankings 2020 by Times Higher Education, IIT Bombay said it had not submitted any data.

The institute, which was ranked in the 401-500 bracket, said the last data they had submitted was for 2017.

This was crucial as THE ranks these institutes purely on the basis of data received from them.

In its ranking methodology, THE has said institutions provide and sign off their institutional data for use in the rankings. On rare occasions. when a particular data point is not provided, THE enters a conservative estimate for the affected metric.

But even as IIT Bombay maintained that it hasn't shared any information, Times Higher Education differed and said it has received the data.

Phil Baty, Editorial Director, Global Rankings, Times Higher Education, told Moneycontrol that IIT Bombay did submit its institutional data to them and that they had a clear record of this submission, including the date and time of sign-off and the name of the approved data submitter.

Later, it became clear that the 2017 data was used to bring out the rankings in 2019. Several Indian institutes like IIT Bombay had expressed concerns about two-year-old data being used to bring out a ranking.

It is to be noted that in 2019, for the first time after seven years, not a single Indian educational institute was ranked among the Top 300 in this ranking.