Panjab University hits another low, slips to 166th spot

Amarjot Kaur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 19

Ranked 166th among 533 universities of 47 countries, Panjab University (PU) has slipped 16 points in The Times Higher Education (THE) Emerging Economies University Rankings 2020.

The rankings include only the institutions of countries classified by the London Stock Exchange’s FTSE Group as “advanced emerging”, “secondary emerging” or “frontier”. The rankings use 13 performance indicators to judge institutions on their teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook, but they are recalibrated to reflect the development priorities of universities in emerging economies.

Under the teaching category, the PU scored 27 points against 26.9 in 2019. In research, this year, it got 14.4 points, while it secured 11 points last year. Though the PU’s citation score was pegged at 54.5 in 2019, it got 56.6 marks this year. In the industry income category, the university scored 34.9 marks against 34 in 2019. In the international outlook category, the PU improved its score by .5 points, adding to the last year’s 16 points.

Ashish Jain, Director, Internal Quality Assurance Cell, PU, said: “Over the years, the THE rankings have seen increased participation from other countries. The PU cannot be compared to the IITs as these are two different-dimensional institutions.”

He added, “We have improved our citation, research and industry income scores. If we compare the performance of universities in India, the PU is ranked 5th. It is ahead of most universities that were given the tag of institutes of eminence by the Indian Government last year. We are hopeful of improving our performance in the coming year.”

According to the THE, the PU has 19,912 students and the student-faculty ratio is pegged at 23:4. One in hundred students at the PU is a foreign national while 49 in 100 students are females.

Global view

Mainland China claims the top four places in the rankings and is also the most-represented country overall, with 81 institutions. Russia, Taiwan and South Africa are the only other territories that feature in the top 10. Meanwhile, India is still second most-represented country with 56 institutions on the list, while Brazil is third with 46. Saudi Arabia is home to the top new entrant in the table — King Abdulaziz University, which is at the 13th place — after the country gained “secondary emerging” status in the FTSE list last year.

13 varsity’s best rank so far

A quick low-down on the performance of the PU in the THE Emerging Economies University Rankings 2020 reveals its downward spiral from the 13th rank in 2014. A year later, the PU bagged the 39th spot. However, it fell to 121st rank in 2016, only to slip further to rank 135 in 2017. Though the university showed a spark of hope in 2018 as it rose to the 130st position in 2018, it could not keep up the promise of improvement and plummeted to 150th rank in 2019.

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