In a departure from past practice in which we presented perceptual rankings of the countrys Top 200 public and private universities together and ranked them inter se, this year we have opted to rate and rank the Top 100 private universities, engineering colleges and B-schools Dilip Thakore This year EducationWorld’s annual summer rankings of India’s best private universities, engineering colleges and B-schools comes hard on the heels of the country’s first ever official higher education institutions rankings published by the Union human resource development ministry on April 4. For several years, when confronted with awkward questions about why none of the country’s 389 public and 355 private universities strictly governed and regulated by supervisory government organisations such as the University Grants Commission and All India Council for Technical Education, figure in the Top 200 World University Rankings of London-based Quacquarelli Symonds and Times Higher Education or even of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the standard official reply was that the evaluation parameters of foreign agencies are inappropriate for assessing India’s sui generis institutions of higher education. The unique parameters of inclusivity and outreach are duly included in the ministry’s parameters (others: teaching, learning and resources; research, consulting and collaborative performance; graduation outcome; and perception) grouped together under a National Institutional Rankings Framework (NIRF). “Country-specific parameters relevant to the Indian situation include regional and international diversity, outreach, gender equity and inclusion of disadvantaged sections of society”, says Union HRD minister Smriti Zubin Irani in the preface to the Central governments inaugural India Rankings 2016 which rates 2,734 universities, engineering, business management and pharmacy colleges countrywide. “The rankings framework will empower a larger number of Indian institutions to participate in the global rankings, and create a significant impact internationally too. I see this as a sensitisation process and an empowering tool, not a tool for protection”, she adds. Although over two years of official labour have been invested in devising NIRF, the methodology of assessing the country’s best higher education institutions is questionable. The rankings are based upon data submitted by the ranked institutions themselves which is likely to be tweaked, if not exaggerated. And although HRD ministry spokespersons claim that the data submitted has been checked and validated, its obvious the validation exercise has been conducted in typically slapdash government style. This explains the patent absurdity of the University of Tezpur, Assam being ranked #5, a notch above Delhi University; Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan, which is in terminal decline being ranked #11 and Jamia Hamdard, an institution dispensing ayurvedic and unani medical education being ranked #18, while the nationally renowned Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi is ranked a lowly #83. Quite obviously in typical government style, the names of the two universities were mixed up. Worse, highly regarded Central institutions such as FMS, Delhi, and the Delhi Technological University, routinely ranked among the countrys Top 10 B-schools and engineering colleges in all media surveys, are not ranked at all. The S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai, regularly ranked among the countrys Top…
