World university rankings, again

Well, it's that time of the year, when the Times of London publishes its university rankings. This is the second year in a row. First go to this page, from which you can jump to the others: overall rankings, field-wise rankings (in science, technology, arts and humanities, social sciences and biomedicine), and regional rankings (US, Europe, and Everywhere Else); however, you need to register for at least a 14-day free trial, which is quite easy.

Here is a quick summary:

• The top 10 are: Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, Yale, CalTech, Princeton and Ecole Polytechnique.
• Indian Institutes of Technology (50), Indian Institutes of Management (84) and JNU (192) are the only Indian universities in the top 200 globally.
• Beijing (15), Tokyo (16), Melbourne (19), NUS-Singapore (22) and Australian National (23) are the only non-US, non-Europe universities in the top 25. What was interesting, to me, is that Beijing is ahead of Tokyo, though it is only by one rank.

Let us turn now to where the Indian universities stand in the field-specific rankings -- all are Top-100 listings:

Science: IITs (36).

Technlogy: IITs (3), IIMs (69).

Arts and Humanities: Calcutta (37) and Delhi (89).

Social Sciences: IIMs (17), JNU (51), IITs (52), Mumbai (93).

Biomedicine (is there any other kind?): IITs (62).

Hmmm, I didn't know IIMs were well known for technology, and IITs, for biomedicine. TIFR may have suffered because of its small size. Somehow, the absence of AIIMS came as a big surprise to me. Finally, the fact that IISc doesn't figure here is going to cause some agitation among students and faculty in our Institute. One cannot attribute it to IISc being a post-graduate institution, since JNU and IIMs are listed.

[At some level, all the 'Universities' listed above -- Calcutta, JNU, Mumbai, Delhi -- are all postgraduate institutions, some of which also (!) conduct UG examinations, and print and issue UG degrees. But that's a rant for another day.]