CHENNAI: After bringing out three successive national rankings, National Board of Accreditation (NBA) chairperson Professor Surendra Prasad said the Ministry of Human Resource Development is contemplating to make the participation of the ranking process mandatory for all public institutions.
In an exclusive interview with the Deccan Chronicle after releasing the national rankings, he discussed various issues, including the credibility of India Rankings and on whether the rankings helped institutions to improve their quality.
How many institutions have participated in the NIRF 2018 Rankings?
In this third edition of India Rankings, a total of 2809 institutions has participated in 9 categories. Collectively, they have submitted 3954 distinct profiles, some in multiple disciplines/categories. This includes 301 Universities, 906 Engineering Institutions, 487 Management Institutions, 286 Pharmacy Institutions, 71 Law, Institutions, 101 Medical Institutions, 59 Architecture Institutions and 1087 General Degree Colleges.
There are some changes in the top 20 ranks of universities and colleges. Are there any new parameters used in NIRF 2018?
We have tweaked some parameters here and there. General degree colleges are not heavily into research. Therefore, it was decided to reduce their weightage for research. Thus Research weight for General Colleges was reduced from 20% to 15% this year. Instead, we increased weights for other parameters like teaching and learning, graduation outcome. There are also a few other very minor changes.
Is NIRF able to bring any improvement in terms of quality in higher education institutions?
That is for all of us to examine in the near future. One important outcome of these rankings is that people and educational institutions have started to appreciate the value of having good data with them. They can discover their strengths and deficiencies more clearly. Over the years we have seen a consistent improvement in data quality.
Is there any move to make it mandatory for all institutions to submit their details for NIRF rankings?
It is a decision that has to be taken by the MHRD. As far as public institutions are concerned the MHRD is contemplating to make it mandatory.
There are complaints that some private institutions are submitting fudged data to get a higher ranking?
This is a real problem as every institution wants to get a higher rank. Private institutions are more prone to submit wrong data. People involved in the ranking process spend a lot of time to scrutinise the data submitted by educational institutions. We try to identify the potential outliers and question institutions about their data. We also called some institutions in person with proofs to support their data entries. Only when we are reasonably satisfied with the accuracy of the data, we use it for ranking.
Some state universities expressed concern that their social inclusiveness was not given due weightage while ranking?
There is almost 10% weightage for outreach and inclusivity. This includes looking at regional diversity, gender diversity, support for economically and socially backward students and physically challenged students.
