The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry is considering linking the autonomy of higher education institutions to their performance as measured by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF).
The NIRF is a comprehensive ranking system for universities developed by the Ministry. The first NIRF rankings were released earlier this year.
Three categories“We are thinking of dividing universities in three categories — A, B and C — on the basis of their NIRF rankings,” HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said. “The first will be most autonomous while the last will require more regulation.”
The A category will comprise institutions with high NIRF rank and these will be highest on the autonomy scale, the B category will comprise middle-ranking institutions with part autonomy but also government regulation, and category C will mean institutions with low ranking that will require greater regulation and hand-holding for improvement.
Mr. Javadekar said greater autonomy could imply a number of things, including the complete freedom for institutions to have their own syllabi and curricula.
Next round in AprilThe next round of NIRF rankings will be published on the first Monday of April 2017. As per the 2016 rankings, IIT Madras topped among engineering colleges, followed by IITs at Mumbai, Kharagpur, Delhi, Kanpur and Roorkee. IIT Madras had a score of 89.41.
Among universities, the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, topped, followed by the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai, Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, Hyderabad University and Tezpur University. Among management schools, IIM Bengaluru was ranked first with a score of 93.04, followed by the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Udaipur and Kozhikode.
