Why are the IITs ranking very low in global rankings? The problem could be that they are only focused on engineering. Not our words. This is what Dr V Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi thinks. According to a report by Indian Express, he said, "We are improving our rankings in engineering and tech but it will still take some time for us to rank higher in world university rankings. It is mainly because we are not comprehensive enough as compared to other foreign universities especially in the US." He added, “If we compare an IIT with Stanford then we are bound to lose because the US university has many schools such as for law, medicine etc. There is a need to promote interdisciplinary education to achieve higher ranks in international rankings.”

A few months back, addressing the same issue, he had written an email to the directors of all IITs, where he said, "..50 per cent of the points used for ranking are reputation based surveys. NIRF, on the other hand, is based on teaching-learning and resources,  research and professional practise, graduation outcome, outreach and inclusivity, and perception. The rankings are based on academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty and international students."

"We simply need to hire more faculty. Finding IIT quality faculty (as our pool is mostly restricted to Indians or people of Indian origin), is a challenge. We can't ramp it up beyond a point. We are highly quality conscious and rightly so," he says, adding that these are government jobs. He also agrees that IITs must have more international students."

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Various news reports have said that, to bridge the gap, the institute has launched 10 academic units in the past six years.