There is a critical need for revision of the current methodology of the National Institutional Ranking Framework that ranks better funded higher education institutions above the high performing ones just because they are small.

By Prof. Ved Parkash Kumar, Educationist

NIRF 2020 was announced by the HRD Minister with ranking  IIT Madras as Best Institute, IISc Bangalore as Best University, Miranda House as Best College, IIM Ahmedabad as best Management, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi as best in Pharmacy and first time introduced dental category in which  Maulana Azad Institute of Dental Sciences, Delhi as best dental college in india.

Good learning environment, a good research culture, learning outcomes  of graduates, social inclusivity ,students from outside state and country , idle faculty student ratio and finally reputation among the stakeholders like students ,public, parents and employers ,are actually essentials of any  good university or Institute.

Almost all these criteria are covered under NIRF Ranking Framework formulated by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2015 . The first rankings compilation process started in 2016. The rankings for 2017 came out on April 3, 2017.

MHRD rankings were created to remove disadvantages of Indian institutions in international rankings, by developing a set of parameters that were very much relevant to our country education system. It was also an exercise to force the Indian institutions to collect and document data on themselves. Since this data were to be made public and moreover managed by ministry of human resource development so the objectivity of the exercise was not to be in doubt.

When the first committee began debating the creation of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), Members made it very clear that students were the most important stakeholders in this exercise. The committee recommended a set of parameters to be judged, most of which were to be based on objective criteria. Since colleges were an important part of the Indian education system, NIRF created a separate ranking system for colleges.  The beauty of NIRF in real terms is their efforts done for ranking even the departments like Pharmacy, management, engineering etc. While there were some non-government efforts also like India Today and The Week’s ranking of colleges and universities, none have enjoyed the near instant fame as by NIRF.

There is a critical need for revision of the current methodology of the National Institutional Ranking Framework that ranks better funded higher education institutions above the high performing ones just because they are small. A simple plotting of NIRF ranks against the annual expenditure by institutions shows a clear downward trend – better funded institutions have better ranks, which is questionable.

Perception by peers is one of the five criteria used by NIRF for rank calculation, with a weight of 10%. It is possible that the size of the institution influences ranking outcomes through perception, apart from the other four criteria used by NIRF. So small-sized higher education institutions will have very little chance of being in the top 100 – not because they are laggards but for their size.

Three sources were used for research impact: the Web of Science database, the Scopus database, and the Indian Citation Index. The first two are international databases, while the third is an Indian database.

The data were substantially richer this year than in the first, thereby allowing policy-makers – or the public – to draw some conclusions, especially when compared to international rankings. In this year’s ranking, the smaller institutions lost out as NIRF introduced points for an institution’s size. There was little dispute about India’s best institutions.

Research publication was obtained by NIRF directly from third party platforms instead of collecting it from respective Institution. “The publication data as considered by NIRF is not complete and does not match with the publication data available on Web of Science, Scopus and Indian Citation Index.

NIRF has picked patent-related data also from third party and did not take into account data provided by Institute. “The third party namely Thomas Reuter has not published the patent related data of the Institute on its platform.

The fourth best university in India seems to be the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), highly specialised research institution in Bengaluru. The JNCASR has around 200-300 PhD students and faculty there at any given time. How does one compare it to the University of Hyderabad (UoH), which came fourth last year? UoH has about 4,500 students and 400 faculties. JNCASR isn’t even a university as the term is typically understood.

This is a structural issue. Many universities in India have an area of focus: engineering (like BITS-Pilani) or social sciences (like the Tata Institute of Social Sciences). Others offer courses across the arts and sciences, like JNU, UoH, Delhi University, etc. It is the latter that fits the general definition of a university. This means that comparing these two kinds of institutions is not very useful – both from the institutions’ and from the students’ points of view.

The State universities have to fill 80 to 85 % of seat from within the state only as per their admission rules whereas Central universities can take admission from across the states. In NIRF ranking, there are separate weight age given if the university have students from other states, which state university can only take 15% . So Comparing Central with State universities, again is not justified for ranking.

 In Nutshell , Ranking parameters need serious improvements that too at major level with healthy brain stroming with educationist involved with it and nodal officers of NIRF at different levels to have a vision to be formed and achieved to that expectations.

(Prof Ved Parkash  Kumar has done NIRF Ranking work of different universities and institutes since inception and done for 30+ institutions.)

Representational Image courtesy - IRF ranking2020 - NIRFIndia.org / PM Modi at IIT Madras 2019 FB Page / Dr. Ved Parkash Kumar