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In the Indian media. At the release of the annual Quacquarelli Symonds’ list of the world’s best universities, some publications focused on India’s debut among the top 200, while othershighlighted that we still don’t feature among the first 100. All of them were, of course, playing on a recurring theme: the absence of Indian institutions from international rankings of universities.Every year, when the Times Higher Education World University Rankings or the QS World University Rankings are announced, Indian institutions fail to make the mark. But academics say this is less a reflection of India’s higher education system and more an indicator of the deficiencies of the rankings.Indian universities, they say, aren’t as bad as the rankings make them out to be. Quite the opposite, it is the ranking system that is loaded against countries like India: by failing to capture each country’s ground realities, the system fails to recognise even the best institutions. If the Indian varsities wanted to focus on rankings, the academics say, they would fare much better. But this doesn’t happen because their priorities are different.Ingredients of a higher rankTypically, rankings of world universities, like the ones compiled by the Times Higher Education and Quacquarelli Symonds, take into account multiple performance indicators. These range from the number of research papers produced and the number of citations those papers received to the international faculty and international student ratio. The Times Higher Education also places emphasis on citations per faculty member for their research work.While all these factors are important to ensure a diverse, research-focused environment, Indian universities often don’t make it to the lists only because of their own unwillingness to participate by providing enough data.Last year, a report in the education magazine Careers 360 examined how a lesser-known Panjab University ranked better than the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management in the Times Higher Education list. It found that many institutions simply don’t care to report actual data to the ranking surveys.“The fact that Panjab University has performed better shows that if a university takes the ranking seriously and provides sufficient information, it could get a reasonably good rank,” the Careers 360 report said .This was echoed by Calcutta University’s pro-vice-chancellor Dhrubajyoti Chattopadhyay in 2013 when the QS rankings were released. “Rankings do not matter to us and we do not hanker for them,” he toldThe Telegraph . “Our strength has always been academics, so if we are judged on this aspect we should be among the top 200 or 250 universities in the world.”Quantity or quality?Besides, the primary objective of most institutions in India is to teach as many people as possible rather than to create a knowledge base or superior research facilities.“Most of them are just teaching institutes; they are not driven by research,” Premchand Palety, chief executive of C-Fore, which ranks Indian educational institutes, toldThe Telegraph in 2013. “They disseminate knowledge but are nowhere in terms of knowledge creation. Most ranking organisations all over the world evaluate an institute by research output.”“Besides, our universities don’t document their systems, processes and outputs,” Palety added. “So when any agency requests them for data, they don’t have it ready and perhaps they think it’s a waste of time collecting it. Our universities are cocooned in a comfort zone.”The China solutionThose who have examined India’s absence from international rankings argue that it’s better to disregard rankings and focus on educating great numbers, especially a big section of the population depends on public-funded universities.A research paper authored by Vidya Rajiv Yervedkar and Gauri Tiwari of Symbiosis International University last year examined why world rankings continue to elude India’s universities.“The phenomenon of global rankings is situated in a centre-periphery paradigm. There are a number of factors that put American and British universities at an inequitable advantage,” it said . “Thus, the terrain of global rankings is not a level playing field: it has gone around the whole of Third World – the shirking is not India’s alone.”The paper used the example of China’s recent surge in world rankings to explain how some countries are seemingly gaming the system by focusing more on the indicators that the rankings consider. It added that China’s measures are “palliative rather than curative”.“Chinese universities, guided by imitation rather than creativity, deploy less than admirable means to achieve global rankings,” the paper said. “The most successful manoeuvre, it appears, is increasing the number of research publication in high impact international journals, without an underlying accent on original knowledge creation.”Cautioning India against single-mindedly focusing on building a few world-class universities with just global competence in mind, the paper noted that limited financial resources in the country could find better use in tackling more structural problems.“Further, the question how well a country like India will be served by diverting scarce resources to building internationally – competitive research intensive universities is also worth considering,” the paper said. “It emerges that there are more constructive and purposeful ways to apply public funding than to make exorbitant investments to get a few universities to feature in the global rankings.”The fact is Indian institutes don't care about international ranking ….

::Why was Spain never able to industrialize as much as France, the United Kingdom, etc.?::Very interesting question.I’ll try to cover the basics in this answer, although I suspect this is material for a book (or three). :)If Spain had the adequate raw materials (except coal!), its industrialization was delayed for the nature of its internal markets and the lack of financial resources for investment.The local infrastructure was poor, and there was little political will to do the necessary investments to improve it, turning Spain in a series of poorly connected urban centers surrounded by vast, underdeveloped rural hinterlands. This favored small local, artisan industries, catering to their local consumers.The peasantry was dedicated to a very primitive agriculture, again dedicated to the local markets, that absorbed most of the available labor, not leaving a big enough surplus to support the large industrial concerns found in other parts of Europe.Moreover, its financial institutions were tiny & unable to support a mass industrialization movement (if such thing would have been tried in the first place, of course). Perennial political instability also meant little opportunity to get external credit for such investments.There was, also, a clear delay in the quality of education & access to educative institutions: Spain struggled to get engineers & other professionals in enough numbers, falling behind Western Europe and becoming very dependent on foreign technical skills & training.Even so, it managed to create certain industrial poles (Asturias, Basque Country, Cataluña), thanks to British, Belgian and French capitals: companies of these countries also were the pioneers of the Spanish railroad network, although initially the railroads were devoted not to palliate the ‘internal disconnection’ of the country, but to connect the ore-producing regions to the ports from where the minerals would be sent elsewhere in Europe.Spain managed to close the distance during the Great War, which was leveraged to improve the road network & local industries, but the exhaustion of Europe and then the Great Depression stopped this incipient re-industrialization, and the situation didn’t improve by the start of the Civil War in 1936.

The American psychologist Frank Fincham (Page on www.fincham.info) wrote as recently as 2000 that forgiveness remained more the domain of theology, not psychology, “The relative lack of research on forgiveness has been attributed to its identification with theology (Fitzgibbons, 1986). Certainly it appears that forgiveness is a “goal commonly advocated by all of the world’s long- standing religions” (Thoresen, Luskin, & Harris, 1998, p. 164), but it has not thereby engendered hostility or disdain in the social sciences. Rather, it simply appears to have been considered insufficiently important or amenable to scientific study (McCullough et al., 1998a)”.Studies on forgiveness per seI found several recent studies that examined the value of forgiveness per se. One of the most compelling examples is Everett Worthington, a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, USA. In this Atlantic magazine article,The Surprising Benefits of Forgiveness, he recounts how he forgave the intruder who, on New Year's eve 1995, bludgeoned his 78 year old mother to death and then raped her with a crowbar. Ironically, Worthington researches the psychology of forgiveness. How could he forgive the seemingly unforgivable, his own mother's violation and murder? He says that over the next 24 hours he completely forgave his mother's murderer using a five-step process he himself had developed, something he calls the REACH (Dr. Everett Worthington, VCU Psychology) method.Recall the incident, including all the hurt.Empathize with the person who caused the hurt.Altruistically forgive the one who hurt.Commit to publicly forgive.Hold onto forgiveness.Worthington says he was helped in his effort to empathize, step 2, by the fact that after committing the atrocity, the intruder apparently ran from room to room, smashing all the mirrors with the crowbar. Worthington interpreted this as a sign that the intruder couldn't bear to look at himself.I think to make this forgiveness process work for oneself, it's important to separate the easier cognitive (intellectual) from the more difficult affective (emotional) empathy.Worthington has several peer-reviewed publications, including randomized control trials, on his forgiveness method.Harper, Quandrea, et al. "Efficacy of a Workbook to Promote Forgiveness: A Randomized Controlled Trial With University Students." Journal of clinical psychology 70.12 (2014): 1158-1169.Lin, Yin, et al. "Efficacy of REACH Forgiveness across cultures." Journal of clinical psychology 70.9 (2014): 781-793.Wade, Nathaniel G., et al. "Efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions to promote forgiveness: A meta-analysis." Journal of consulting and clinical psychology 82.1 (2014): 154.Exline, Julie J., et al. "Forgiveness, depressive symptoms, and communication at the end of life: A study with family members of hospice patients." Journal of palliative medicine 15.10 (2012): 1113-1119.Watkins, David A., et al. "Forgiveness and interpersonal relationships: A Nepalese investigation." The Journal of social psychology 151.2 (2011): 150-161.Nathaniel Wade, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, USA, one of Worthington's former students, also studies the psychology of forgiveness. Biola University Center for Christian ThoughtAnn C. Recine, a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire teacher and Nurse Practitioner with a holistic private practice in Eau Claire, WI, USA, also researches on forgiveness. Recine, Ann C. "Designing Forgiveness Interventions Guidance From Five Meta-Analyses."Journal of Holistic Nursing (2014): 0898010114560571.Noreen et al (Page on st-andrews.ac.uk) start with Mandela's example of choosing to forgive his captors and refer to recent studies that have examined the physiological benefits of forgiveness.Page on niu.eduPage on www.fincham.infoThere are a couple of interesting theses from the Psychology Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA.The 2010 PhD level thesis by Ryan Fehr Page on umd.edu summarizes “studies have demonstrated that forgiveness facilitates life satisfaction (Karremans, Van Lange, Ouwerkerk, & Kluwer, 2003), reduces blood pressure (Witvliet, Ludwig, & Vander Laan, 2001), facilitates interpersonal cooperation (Fincham, 2000), and enhances victims’ general feelings of relatedness toward other people to pre-conflict levels (Karremans, Van Lange, & Holland, 2005). Taken together, these findings confirm that forgiveness enhances what is commonly perceived to be lost during conflict – well-being, cooperation, and relatedness”.On the other hand, the 2011 Master's level thesis by Lauren M. Boyatzi Page on umd.edu explores whether a perceived need for urgent cognitive closure drives the desire for revenge.Some of the most heartbreaking medical accounts on forgiveness are in this study, Page on coh.org (see Table 3). They interviewed nurses on how those dying in their care dealt with the need for forgiving and forgiveness. Some of their narrative excerpts are profoundly moving:“We took care of a COPDer who was near EOL. Her daughter had moved to Hawaii (we are in NY). I had several discussions on the phone to the daughter about mom’s condition (She was the DPA.) I found out the reason why the daughter moved to Hawaii was to be far away from her mother as possible. I didn’t know her stepfather had sexually abused her. The daughter was feeling extremely guilty and didn’t know what to do. I encouraged her to forgive her mother and to let go. I explained to her it would help her mother on her journey as well. Several days later, the daughter called her mother and forgave her. After struggling several weeks with the COPD the patient was at peace and left us comfortably and at ease”.“I cared for a patient who was dying of the same syndrome his brother had. The brother was older and their single mother had the older brother get a stem cell transplant (only cure for their syndrome). The older brother died of complications from transplant. So she had decided not to do transplant for the younger brother. Then with the younger brother dying of sequelae of his syndrome, the mother felt incredible guilt that her decisions ‘‘led to both her sons dying’’. Her guilt and grief manifested as anger. So it took me a while to even process her real feelings. Once she admitted how she really felt, she could start working on ways to get her to forgive herself. I’m not sure that she ever really did”.“In the early 90s, I was caring for a 32-year-old man dying of AIDS. He had not had any contact with his family for many years. With the help of a social worker, he called his family and let them know he was dying. My experience was when an elderly man and woman (the parents) and a younger man (brother) stepped off the elevator. The men were in overalls and explained that this was the first time they had ever been out of Kansas. I walked them to the room and the brother immediately climbed into bed and lovingly cradled his brother. It was a very tender moment”.Societal level forgiveness? One of the most powerful empirical examples is South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa)Studies comparing forgiveness and punishment1. A useful starting point for older references is a 2014 peer-reviewed study by Geert-Jan Will, Eveline A. Crone, and Berna Güroğlu from the Institute of Psychology, Leiden University in the Netherlands. "Acting on social exclusion: neural correlates of punishment and forgiveness of excluders." Social cognitive and affective neuroscience(2014): nsu045, Page on researchgate.net.2. Brown, Ryan P. "Measuring individual differences in the tendency to forgive: Construct validity and links with with depression." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29.6 (2003): 759-771.3. Brune, M., Juckel, G., Enzi, B. (2013). "An eye for an eye"? Neural correlates of retribution and forgiveness. Plos One, 8, e73519. Page on plosone.org4. De Quervain, Dominique J-F., et al. "The neural basis of altruistic punishment." Science (2004).5. Exline, J.J., Baumeister, R.F., Zell, A.L., Kraft, A.J., Witvliet, C.V. (2008). "Not so innocent: does seeing one’s own capacity for wrongdoing predict forgiveness?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 495–515.6. Gunther Moor, B., Gu ̈rog ̆lu, B., Op de Macks, Z.A., Rombouts, S.A.R.B., Van der Molen, M.W., Crone, E.A. (2012). "Social exclusion and punishment of excluders: neural correlates and developmental trajectories." Neuroimage, 59, 708–17. http://dare.uva.nl/document/2/1001687. Gu ̈rog ̆lu, B., Will, G.-J., Klapwijk, E.T. (2013). "Some bullies are more equal than others: peer relationships modulate altruistic punishment of bullies after observing ostracism." International Journal of Developmental Science, 7, 13–23. Page on researchgate.net8. McCullough, M.E., Fincham, F.D., Tsang, J.A. (2003). "Forgiveness, forbearance, and time: the temporal unfolding of transgression-related interpersonal motivations." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 540–57. Page on www.fincham.info9. McCullough, M.E., Kurzban, R., Tabak, B.A. (2013). "Cognitive systems for revenge and forgiveness." Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36, 1–15. Page on ucla.edu10. Park, J.-H., Enright, R.D., Essex, M.J., Zahn-Waxler, C., Klatt, J.S. (2013). "Forgiveness intervention for female South Korean adolescent aggressive victims." Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 34, 268–76.11. Strobel, A., Zimmermann, J., Schmitz, A., et al. (2011). "Beyond revenge: neural and genetic bases of altruistic punishment." Neuroimage, 54, 671–80.12. Will, G.-J., van den Bos, W., Crone, E.A., Gu ̈rog ̆lu, B. (2013). "Acting on observed social exclusion: developmental perspectives on punishment of excluders and compensation of victims." Developmental Psychology, 49, 2236–44.13. Young, L., Saxe, R. (2009). "Innocent intentions: a correlation between forgiveness for accidental harm and neural activity." Neuropsychologia, 47, 2065–72. Page on mit.eduMethodological problems with some of these studies (actually problems with psychology studies in general)I'm skeptical about data from studies that incentivize volunteers to participate by paying them (Conciliatory gestures promote forgiveness and reduce anger in humans, Page on nih.gov, Page on researchgate.net) or giving them extra credit Page on www.fincham.info.A key problem in the research on forgiveness is the “measurement problem” (see pages 11, 32, 33 of this Masters thesis, Page on vcu.edu), i.e., how to distinguish between real/sincere and fake/pseudo self-forgiveness. In the former, we have to painfully work our way through the psychological, social and spiritual consequences of wrongdoing. In the latter, we let ourselves off the hook and excuse ourselves of blame for any wrongdoing. Available psychological measurement tools cannot separate real and fake self-forgiveness. I think the academic study of forgiveness would improve with an inter-disciplinary approach that measures physiological responses to distinguish between the genuinely remorseful and the cheaters. In fact, much of psychology research would improve with more objective criteria such as physiological assessments and follow-up on participants' actual actions rather than relying solely or overtly on self-reporting.Shoddy statistics are the bane of much biomedical research including psychology research.Giner-Sorolla, Roger. "Science or art? How aesthetic standards grease the way through the publication bottleneck but undermine science." Perspectives on Psychological Science 7.6 (2012): 562-571. Page on emilkirkegaard.dkNuzzo, R. "Statistical errors: P values, the ‘gold standard’ of statistical validity, are not as reliable as many scientists assume." Nature 506 (2014): 150-2.No one has done more to highlight this problem than Stanford epidemiologist John P. A. Ioannidis. Why Most Published Research Findings Are FalseHow to Make More Published Research True