For the first time ever, Delhi University (DU) has been ranked among the top 500 universities of the world by the prestigious Times Higher Education Supplement, QS World University Ratings 2007.

It has been ranked 254 for its research quality, graduate employability, international outlook and teaching quality. The rank is way ahead of two IITs, Bombay and Delhi, which also find place among the top 400.

Reacting to the news, DU vice-chancellor Deepak Pental hoped that the varsity would be among the top 200 next year. Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge expectedly figure among the top 10 universities of the world.

“I am not very happy with the ranking. It should improve and rank among the top 200 by next year,” Pental told Times City .

“Since DU has never in the past figured in the list of top universities, whether in the Shanghai Jiao Tong University nor in the THES rankings, this is certainly a boost for the university fraternity,” he added.

Speaking about future plans, Pental said, “This university is a brand and its alumni has contributed to various sectors of society as teachers, bureaucrats, management professionals, scientists and judges, and we have to keep up with global standards.

As of now, 10 per cent of the alumni is doing well, but we believe that this percentage should be as high as 50. However, at the same time, we need to improve upon the delivery of education system with a lot of reforms, particularly in academics since improvement in research takes a much longer time.”

As part of its proposed reforms, the university plans to introduce a uniform semester system at the postgraduate level, attract good faculty by providing them with incentives like more frequent increments and other such steps.

Though reforms are much-needed, Delhi University has reason to celebrate as it has left behind even the prestigious IITs in the rankings. IIT-Bombay has been ranked 269th, while IIT-Delhi figures as 307 in the list. The other IITs, Kanpur, Madras and Roorkee, figured even lower, occupying slots between 431 and 433.

Meanwhile, the universities of Calcutta, Mumbai and Pune have been ranked 410, 456 and 469 in the list. For the ranking, each parameters carried specific weightage such as quality of research (60%) graduate employability (15%), international outlook (10%) and teaching quality (20%).

As per the THES website, for each indicator, the highest scoring institution is assigned a score of 100, and other institutions are calculated as a percentage of the top score.

Besides peer review, faculty citation, recruiter review and student faculty ratio were the key indicators for this survey.

See the full list of University here.