National rankings for education institutions today

Chennai: The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), the Indianised version of the world university rankings, is set to be released on Monday.
Indian higher educational institutes have not found a place in top 100 in the world university rankings in the past several years. The reason given was that the parameters for ranking were totally different and Indian universities cannot compete with foreign universities in this.

In an effort to make the rankings meaningful in the Indian context, the Ministry of human resource development (MHRD) had prepared the national rankings for more than 3,600 educational institutions and universities. The rankings will be released by the minister Smriti Irani in Delhi on Monday.  “In world rankings, they give marks for foreign students and faculty in the campuses and number of Nobel laureates, which Indian universities cannot afford right now. There was a need for Indianised version of the rankings to suit the local context and NIRF will just fulfill that need,” said Professor H.Devaraj, vice-chairman, University Grants Commission. “It also ranks the institutions streamwise like management, engineering, arts and science and universities. It will definitely pave the way for the healthy competition among the institutions,” he said.

MHRD has bestowed the task of ranking to the National Board of Accreditation (NBA). The ranking will not be by numbers but in groups in various levels. For example, the top ranking institutions will be listed as Level A institutions like in the US. The NIRF ranking will be based on teaching, learning and resources, research, consulting and collaborative, performance, graduation outcomes, outreach and inclusiveness, perception. Ranking will be given for six categories of institutions including Engineering, Management, Pharmacy, Architecture, Universities and Colleges.