The Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, has been rated as the top higher educational institution of India across disciplines, as per the first-ever overall ranking of institutions released by the Centre on Monday.
The seven top IITs, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Benaras Hindu University (BHU) figure in the top 10 among the 2,995 institutions that participated in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), 2017.
IIT-Madras ranks second, while JNU ranks sixth in the all-India list.
Releasing the rankings, Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said the government would give more grants to the institutions ranked higher.
Out of favour
However, the elite Indian Institutes of Management have not performed too well, with IIM-Ahmedabad, the top business school, standing 17th in the list. All other IIMs rank below 20.
There are separate lists within disciplines for engineering, management and pharmacy, and for universities and colleges.
This is how the first NIRF ranking, brought out last year, had ranked institutions, without combined ranks.
Among engineering colleges, the IITs at Chennai, Mumbai, Kharagpur, New Delhi and Kanpur are among the top five. Among universities, the top five are IISc, JNU, BHU, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (Bengaluru) and Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
Asked for his response to JNU’s high ranking given the government’s friction over the last one year, Mr. Javadekar said, “The high ranks of JNU and Jadavpur are for the research work they do, not for raising slogans for Afzal Guru.”
Among management institutions, the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Lucknow and Kozhikode are the top five.
Among colleges, the top five were Miranda House, Delhi; Loyola College, Chennai; Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), Delhi; Bishop Heber College, Tiruchirapalli; and Atma Ram Sanatan Dharm College, Delhi.
With St Xavier's College in Kolkata ranked sixth and the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College for Women ranked seventh, the rankings took many by surprise.
Asked why St. Stephens and Hindu College in Delhi figured nowhere, a senior official said: “The rankings are of only those colleges that participated. These may not have taken part at all.”
The NIRF ranked the institutions on the basis of five parameters: teaching-learning resources (student strength, faculty-student ratio, faculty qualifications and experience, financial resources and utilisation); research and professional practice (publications, quality of publications, patents, projects); graduation outcomes (placement and higher studies, salary, Ph.D degrees awarded); outreach and inclusivity (diversity in student pool); and perception (among peers, employers and the public).
A senior official told The Hindu that the rankings had sought to do justice to the diversity of courses.
“When we look at graduation outcomes, for instance, we are not just looking at the pay packages. We are looking at how students progress,” the official said. “If a student becomes an influential official or academic, or even goes to pursue education in a top, global institution, we will see these as progress, just as we would look at a good pay package with a good firm as progress.”
