London: India was ranked second in a list of 300 top universities in emerging economies, “making great strides" in the compilation topped by China.

China ranked first with 52 universities while India was on the second spot with 27 universities in the ranking—‘Brics and Emerging Economies University Rankings 2017’—compiled annually by ‘Times Higher Education’ which released its report on Thursday.

“India is making great strides. Its flagship university, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), breaks into the top 15 for the first time this year in 14th place, thanks to improved scores for its teaching environment and research influence.

“The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) climbs three places to 26th, its highest ever rank, due to improved scores across all of the five pillars underlying the methodology," said Phil Baty, editor of the rankings.

“In fact, India could soon overtake Taiwan as the second most-represented country in the top 200 of the table, behind China. Overall, India has 19 universities in the top 200, up from 16 last year, while Taiwan has 21, down from 24," Baty said.

Peking and Tsinghua universities in China held on to the two top spots for the fourth year running and China has a further four universities in the top 10. Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, University of Cape Town and University of Science and Technology of China complete the top five rankings.

The other Indian universities to make the cut this year include IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur at joint 32; IIT Madras at 35; IIT Roorkee at 62; IIT Kharagpur at 71; Jadavpur University at 99; IIT Guwahati at 106; Tata Institute of Fundamental Research at 107; University of Delhi at 109; Panjab University at 135; Tezpur University at 140; Savitribai Phule Pune University at 143; Aligarh Muslim University at 157; University of Calcutta at 179; Sri Venkateswara University at 186; National Institute of Technology Rourkela at 195; and Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, at 196.

The un-ranked 200-300 category include Acharya Nagarjuna University, Amrita University, Andhra University, Osmania University, Amity University, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Maharaji Sayaji Rao University of Baroda and Manipal University.

While India and China were described as this year’s “winners", the performance of the other Brics—an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—was described as “waning".

“With almost double the number of institutions in this ranking than the second most-represented country, India, China looks set to continue to dominate the list in the years to come, while other nations will have to run faster just to stand still," Baty said.

There were gains made overall by Turkey (16 institutions ranked, up from nine last year), Egypt (eight versus three last year) and Pakistan (seven versus two last year) in terms of representation. PTI

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