Money talks...does it walk the talk?

Two interesting stories about education...

Harvard has been ranked as the top university in the world for the sixth consecutive year, while none of the Indian institutes of higher education figure in the latest edition of The Times Higher Education, world reputation ranking report. The United States dominates the rankings of 200 world class universities.

China has performed exceedingly well with six of its universities figuring in the list of 200, two in the first 50s as per the World University Rankings 2010-2011 based on the largest global survey of academic opinion where more than 13,000 experienced academics from 131 countries give their expert insight.

Between 2004 and 2009, the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and the Jawaharlal Nehru University figured in the global list of 200 institutes but have slipped out in the new scoring system.

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Final placements are over at most of the IIMs, bringing relief to scores of students some of who went through a month-long process to get job offers. The number of offers has gone up from last year with an increase in average salary. If IIM-Kozhikode saw the total number of offers go up to 305 from 265 last year (the number of offers per company rose to 3.37 from 2.66 in 2010) IIM-Calcutta saw slot zero offers going up to 139 from last year's 90.

Similarly, IIM Indore, which wrapped up its placements last month, saw number of offers increase to 241 this year, from 235 in the previous year.