Catalyzing Performance
Do you see what I see?
Critical analysis of “QS World University Rankings 2022"
Who doesn’t like a celebration? We all must celebrate the smallest achievements to be positive and passionate for larger goal.
Let me share one quick celebratory reaction of my CEO. This is about an ambitious start-up in trying to bring revolutionary changes to the job portal market. We were following our first government deal of small amount. While I was engaged with another colleague in the corporate office, I saw our CEO coming very happy, with the winning confirmation of that tender, towards our CMO and they both very happily high fived each other like it was something truly a big break. Celebrating small achievements are very necessary to keep the momentum and be passionate about the much bigger vision. But it happens when there is strong synergy in an involved leadership team.
The difficulty to synergise reaches its peak when
this is about thought leaders to come together
who are really busy celebrating their thinking and Gyan (knowledge);
are only comfortable counting numerous issues and cursing everything else other than what is in their control;
not focused on what is desirable from them;
and not being able to see the great set of opportunities they are sitting upon.
Yes I am very much talking about our education system and especially talking about the thought leaders and educational influencers because they can bring transformational changes to make India to relive the World Educational Leadership.
Who celebrates declining performance. Yes, our INIs performance is on a decline.
My hand-folded and keen request to all our distinguished educational leaders and influencers to take my words positively and realize where we stand today and what we are aspiring for. You agree or not, whether it is your own goal or shown by someone else, but NEP is a national document and I very much pick its vision as my vision and it says, “The aim must be for India to have an education system by 2040 that is second to none….”
Before landing on the agenda, I would like to raise a few important aspirations, I know you will agree unanimously:
Do you wish India to regain its lost glory of ‘World Education Leader’?
Do you wish India to be the World leader in Science and Technology, a critical element to attain global leadership? For this, we need a major R&D boost with India to lead in inventions in all critical areas.
Do you wish India to be the World manufacturing hub to give the world’s biggest youth population desired exposure and path to success? We have severe competition here with China here who filed 12.43 lac Patent applications as per WIPO 2020 which is 4.4 times that of the US and 64 times that of India.
The difficult most and mentally onerous is the reality of a Soldier facing the enemy head-on in a war, he neither have time to give gyan to someone nor to crib about the system but has focused goal of killing the enemy knowing that he can be killed any moment. Same way, our educational leaders need to focus on performance while everything is secondary and supplementary.
Please refer to one of the most revered and trusted sources in university rankings, QS World University Ranking 2022, which was announced on June 8th 2021. I am bringing select few universities of concern in front of you:
While below rankings are for HEIs but it makes equal sense for School Education Leaders too, as they are feeders to HEIs and can play amazing role in boosting Indian HEI performance on the global landscape.
Country and Establishment Year Analysis:
Look at the country column and we find that out of the top 10 universities 4 each belongs to the US and England.
Looking at the top 10 Universities in the last column of “Establishment Year” we find that:
England and the US have the oldest functional universities with the roots of the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and Harvard University goes back to 1096, 1231 and 1631 CE respectively.
This suggests that institutional leadership can be sustained across many centuries.
6 out of the top 10 were established in the 2nd half of the 19th century primarily towards its end.
Let’s analyse the performance of CHINA in the top 50 with respect to “Establishment Year”:
There are 5 Chinese Universities ranked 17th, 18th, 31st, 45th and 50th established in 1911, 1898, 1905, 1897 and 1896 respectively.
This shows China is able to make a considerable mark in the top 50 with institutes established towards the start of the 20th century.
There is another one chasing at the 98th rank established in 1958.
Now looking at Indian Universities performance, we find that:
Our best performing university and one of the most respected too, IIT Bombay, established in 1958, stands at meagre 177th position.
IIT Delhi and IISc Bangalore established in 1961 and 1909 make it to the top 200 at 185th and 186th rank respectively.
Do you know, IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay were ranked 154 and 174 respectively in 2008 ranking while IISc ranked 147 in 2016. Means IIT Delhi and IISc registered a considerable decline from their 1st appearance while IIT Bombay is struggling to hold its rank. We can also say that universities from other countries are making much better efforts to climb the rank.
Only the University of Delhi and JNU made it to the top 10 from India though ranked in 501-510 and 561-570 respectively.
Please also look at the following data on the oldest functional universities in India and we find that:
Britishers’ did a great job for India by establishing most of these universities out of which the University of Allahabad which was established in 1887 was once known as ‘Oxford of the East.
Out of these oldest functional universities, 8 were established in the 19th century mostly in its 2nd half. Means same time as most of world’s top 10 and China’s top 5.
Grievously, only IIT Roorkee, appeared in QS World University Ranking 2022.
These universities seem to have lost post-independence making them political juggernauts but tossed on academic performance. May someone locate where is our ‘Oxford of the East’ now. It seem to have become a victim of politics.
Academic and Citations Analysis: ‘Academic Peer Review’ and ‘Citations Per Faculty’ sweeps 60% weightage of total and both are closely interlinked. Looking at these 2 indicators in the ranking table we make following key observations:
All institutes performed poorly in Academic Peer Review with less than 50% score.
IISc emerged knocking with a 100% score in Citations per Faculty with IIT Guwahati, Roorkee and Kharagpur giving a remarkable performance.
Faculty/Student Ratio with 20% weightage is stopping our INIs to unlock their performance. Simply put, more quality faculty per student, more will be the exploration and better will be the overall performance.
Conclusion:
The dilapidated status of our education system with few INIs putting their mettle to ensure India shines, the entire system seems lost. While talking to the owner of one of the prestigious group of schools, he told me that the biggest issue with our education system is that the stakeholders believe that India has been the global hub of knowledge and we know everything, while the reality is that they all are living in a well and do not want to change. Yes, India was the World education leader but more than 1000 years ago. If you feel that I am very harsh, please see my previous blog https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6802821685428015104 which talks about the poor performance of India on World Educating for the Future Index 2019 and WIPO Indicators 2020. So my nervousness is genuine primarily because I can also see solutions which these leaders either do not know or they are ignorant due to cosy and comfortable life.
I also understand that there are innumerable external factors out of direct control of institutions, teachers, parents and students, but believe me if we create clarity on what to do and ownership of our independent role; a major and exponential jump in the overall educational performance can be achieved without the alignment of such external factors. We can see around us, in nearly every vertical, that there are people making outstanding performance within our existing system and challenges.
We at ActuatorVivek are proud to have researched and worked out specific strategy for Indian education system filled with Fresh Thinking which can be very much realized with the current manpower through training. Having conducted a number of “Train the Trainer” Programs at prestigious schools and HEIs, we have gathered enormous response from the teachers’ fraternity and thus we are confident that our teachers can make this happen through rejuvenated and dedicated efforts.
ActuatorVivek offers:
Leadership Programs for Institutional Leaders
Uniquely crafted “Train the Trainer” Programs for teaching fraternity across Schools and HEIs;
Most comprehensive “Parenting Mantras” for school parents and
Career Programs for students from Class 9 onwards till Young Professional.
While the offerings listed above are very comprehensive and consciously structured, a few most fundamental areas we unravel are:
Why Education? Or why we educate our children?
What in Schooling and at Higher Education?
The Concept of Age which gives step by step strategy and breaks down to smallest question/issue in the minds of Parents, Teachers and the School Leadership Team.
And so on…
The content is different, customized and matches the role of the respective stakeholder.
For queries, please contact us @ actuatorvivek@gmail.com