Panjab University 4th best in country

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 2

Panjab University (PU) has jumped to the fourth spot in the country in the Times rankings. The Times Higher Education (THE) released its World University Rankings-2021 today.

This year, the PU has shown an improvement in its ranking. At the global level, it is bracketed in the 601-800 segment, like last year, but among Indian universities, it has been ranked fourth. Last year, the PU was ranked 16th in India.

The world rankings are based on five indicators, which represent key areas in higher education excellence. These are teaching, research, citations, industry income and international outlook.

The PU has shown an improvement in its overall score, which is now in the bracket of 30.2-36.3 from last year’s 28.3-35.2. The increase in the score is mainly due to higher appraisal in teaching and research criteria.

However, the PU has lost significantly in citations. The overall citation score is 52.9. There is a marginal decrease in industry income and international outlook scores as well, which dropped to 16 points. The research part was also restricted to 15.2 points. In a way, the PU has ranked at the top since the other three institutes above it this year are central technical institutes — the Indian Institute of Science and the IITs at Ropar and Indore.

The PU is placed after these three institutes, beating other IITs and universities.

The Vice-Chancellor, Prof Raj Kumar, expressed pleasure over the PU performance in the Times rankings and gave the credit to the faculty, students and other stakeholders of the university.

“The PU is now making rapid strides towards excellence. Recently, in ARIIA Rankings, the PU was placed second in the country and now in the Times rankings, we are fourth. I am conscious of the fact that this has been primarily due to infusion of innovation and start-up culture in the university over the past two years. I am aware that to be competitive globally, we have to focus on the industry income and international outlook of the university. I am happy to inform that we are now receiving a tremendous interest from overseas students and in due course of time, we shall improve in these parameters too,” said the Vice-Chancellor.

“The results are on expected lines. We did an in-depth survey of data parameters this time and due to the innovation buzz at the university, our research output has increased. Our faculty deserves the credit for being productive and ensuring that they walk the talk with students,” said Dr Ashish Jain, Director, Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC).

Key stats

• 23.4 No. of students per staff member
• 1 Percentage of international students
• 49:51 Female-Male student ratio
• 19,912 Number of FTE students

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