Why in news?
Ministry of Human Resource Development recently released the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2018.
What is NIRF?
- The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) was approved by the MHRD and launched in 2015.
- The framework outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country.
- The parameters broadly cover -
- Teaching, Learning and Resources
- Research and Professional Practices
- Graduation Outcomes
- Outreach and Inclusivity
- Perception
- There were a total of 9 categories this year under which India’s higher education institutions were judged.
- The 2018 exercise newly added the disciplines of law, medicine and architecture.
What are the latest rankings?
- The ranking of most colleges and universities have remained almost the same this year.
- Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, is again ranked first in both overall and university categories.
- The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are the best among engineering institutes.
- The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are the best among management institutes.
- This is for the third time in row on the NIRF ranking that IITs and IIMs are leading.
- IIT-Madras was adjudged the best engineering institute.
- IIM-Ahmedabad was adjudged the best management institute.
- The All India Institute of Medical Sciences was adjudged the top medical college.
- There were some institutes, which could not be placed in any of the 9 categories.
- These have been placed in special category because of the quality of research work.
- Some of them include the National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, etc.
What are the concerns?
- Participation - India has around 860 universities, 40,000 colleges and 11,600 standalone institutions of higher education.
- Of these, only around 4,500 institutes took part in the India Rankings 2018.
- Even among the institutions that participated, there is a clear skew towards southern, south-eastern and western India.
- The government is planning to cut some sort of funding to those which do not participate in the rankings.
- Parity - Older institutions with historical advantages now enjoy a higher ranking.
- This obscures newer entrants who may have stronger claims to excellence.
- Approach - The ranking approach worldwide is critiqued for failing to capture the crucial metric of learning outcomes.
- The rankings instead rely on proxy data on faculty strength and qualifications.
What is the way forward?
- Funding - The governing bodies should make available adequate financial and academic resources to colleges.
- This is particularly essential for the developing colleges, to help them improve performance.
- Participation - Ranking educational and research institutes has some significant practical uses.
- It helps students make study choices, sponsors to identify research projects, and other universities to form partnerships.
- Thus, for a reliable and relevant process, all recognised educational institutions should be enrolled, and not just the public ones.
- Objective - Beyond competitive ranking, the higher order goal is to foster learning and scholarship.
- Encouraging faculty to exercise complete academic freedom is essential to achieve this.
- The NIRF ranking thus needs a fine tuning to incorporate these aspects.
Source: Business Standard, The Hindu
