Blogs:

Going through records of the number of top universities in the world located in our country is the best way to measure our scientific impact. Annually, one such list is published by the US News and World Report. According to the list published in 2010, a total of 31 universities among the top 100 are from our country.

Moreover, out of the top 400 global university rankings, 87 are from the US and 46 in UK. In terms of ratio of engineers per million people, we rank second highest in the world. While only 8 of the top 400 universities are from China, only 6 were from India.

Considering all these aspects, we can identify many noteworthy points. We certainly remain the best in the world in terms of higher education in spite of constant complaints on lack of funding says Hank Campbell and Alex Berezow, higher education experts. It is obvious that none of the other countries in the world are even close enough. 

Considering the fact that the economy of UK is about one-seventh of that of US with a population around one-fifth, it is indeed commendable that 19 of its universities are among the top 100 in the world. 23 universities are in the top 100 global universities in continental Europe which is quite a formidable number.

Conventional critics however point out that our country is in the decline. They harp on the fact that countries like China are taking the lead in the field of science and technology. Conventional wisdom is as usual wrong. In 2013, China will invest only around $220 billion on research and development as compared to US investment of $424 billion. Based on the total number of scientific journals published in China, a BBC report said about two years ago that it was just a matter of time before China overtook US in scientific output.

Quality definitely triumphs over quantity says David Cyranoski in Nature. He pointed out that going through the scientific journals published in China, it is obvious that most of them are plagiarized, incremental and are not read by anyone.

Another measure of scientific output wherein the number of times researchers cite the journals shows that China is not even in the list of top 10 in the world.  The sad fact however that is our young scientists face a bleak future in spite of our institution’s high standings. 

It is time for our politicians to focus on surplus of scientists and find ways to provide the young PhDs with hot, lucrative jobs. Rather than painting a bleak picture and blaming each other, it is time to put our heads together and devise ways to help our talented, brilliant scientists contribute to the country’s growth and prosperity.

This is the only way we can remain strong globally and retain our position as one of the top nations in terms of higher education sustainability. We have all the talent and quality institutions we need. All we need now is brilliant strategies to encourage and motivate the talent pool to keep our economy going forward.