IITs and IISc among the top 100 of Asia's 300 Best Universities

33 Indian varsities have made it to the Times Higher Education’s list of top 300 Asian University Rankings 2017.

Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science led the country’s universities – retaining its 27th spot – while the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (42) and private institute in Chennai Veltech University (43) both feature in the top 50.

Also, India is the third most-represented nation in the list. This year, it has more than twice the number of names than the 16 featured in the 2016 list of top 200 universities.

“It is great news that India has more than doubled its representation in this year’s ranking,” editor of the UK-based magazine Phil Baty said.

The rankings were topped by Singapore’s National University, followed by China’s Peking University. Five other Chinese varsities made it to the top 20. Hong Kong and South Korea have five institutes each in the top 20. Japan has only two in the first 20, but 69 among the top 300.

While IISc-Bangalore maintained its ranking at the 27th position, IIT-Kanpur jumped several notches from the 101-110 band to rank 63.

IIT-Delhi (54) and IIT-Madras (62) also made to the top 100. India’s performance improved because the universities took part in global benchmarking exercises.

“Last year, the Indian government launched a new funding-backed project aimed at catapulting IITs to the top of world university rankings,” said Baty.

Like India, Pakistan tripled its representation from that last year. In 2016, it had only two universities in the list, while it has seven this year. Sri Lanka’s University of Colombo also featured in the list for the first time.