EWIHER Top 300 Universities 2022-23

To rationalise evaluation under the broad heads of private and government, universities are rated and ranked in 15 separate categories including multi-disciplinary, liberal arts, engineering and technology, social sciences, and medical and life sciences among other discrete league tables, writes Dilip Thakore and Summiya Yasmeen

Even if it sounds somewhat immodest, a unique feature of the richly detailed annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER) — introduced in 2013 and now spread over two issues (May-June) — is continuous improvement and refinement. A decade ago, we began rating and ranking undergrad Arts, Science and Commerce, and Engineering and Technology colleges and B-schools. Subsequently, we introduced the concept of rating and ranking private and government higher education institutions separately, given their vastly differing institutional cultures.

Eight years ago, we stopped evaluating and ranking the well-funded and heavily-subsidised Central government-promoted 23 IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), 31 NITs (National Institutes of Technology) in the engineering and technology league tables, and eliminated the country’s 20 IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) from the annual EWIHER.

The rationale of these omissions is that they routinely top the league tables of all media publications, including India Today, and the business dailies. Your editors reasoned that including the well-resourced and subsidised Central government-promoted IITs and IIMs would be repetition and replication of mainstream media publications, and of peripheral interest to the great majority of school/college-leavers given that IIMs, NITs and IITs admit a mere 2 percent of school-leavers and graduates who write their entrance examinations.