Two Centrally-funded institutions of higher learning in the district – the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIM-K) and the National Institute of Technology Calicut (NIT-C) - have nothing to cheer about this year’s ranking of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
The IIM-K, which is holding its 20th convocation on the campus at Kunnamangalam on Saturday, failed to retain its fifth place in the management category by losing out the position to the two-year postgraduate programme conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai.
It also did not figure in the list of 100 institutions in the overall category while last year it was placed at 85th position in this section. However, a solace for the IIM-K, which did not have a full-time director for nearly four years, is that it secured a score of 65.21 while IIM-Ahmedabad, which was ranked first, secured a score of 79.18.
Worse is the case of the NIT-C, which slipped to the 50th position from the previous year’s 44th rank in the engineering colleges category. Incidentally, the NIT-C, which had faced acute shortage of staff and lack of research facilities, was placed at 35th in 2016. Its score was 44.30, raising concerns about the declining academic standards.
The score of the NIT-C for teaching, learning and resources was 55.17; research and professional practice 26.58; graduation outcome 60.60; outreach and inclusivity 41.85 and perception 34.67. Significantly, the NITs at Tiruchirappali (11th), Surathkal (21st), Warangal (25th), Kurukshetra (44) and Durgapur (47th) have bettered their positions from last year.
This is a silver lining
Nevertheless, a silver lining in the cloud for the NIT-C is that it still figures on the list of three colleges among the 100 best engineering colleges in the country.
The others being the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (23rd) and the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram (75th position). The NIRF ranking system is based on five major parameters and some 20 sub-parameters. However, a five-dimensional view across the main parameters gives relative strengths of the institution in teaching and learning ambience, research and industry linkages, graduation outcomes, outreach and inclusivity, and perception by peers.
