Academic institutions in the city, which is called an educational hub, are lagging in the India Rankings of higher educational institutions on performance.
The annual India Rankings (2019) has been published by the HRD Ministry’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) considering various parameters of the participating institutions including teaching, learning and resources, research and on-campus placements.
Only 4 in top 200
Contrary to the performance of several institutions in the past, only four colleges figured in the top 200 list of various categories including overall, university, engineering, degree college, medical, law, pharmaceutical and architecture.
Though the number of participating institutions from the city and the district doubled, the number to find a place in the top ranking band fell to half.
In 2017, only 29 institutions in the district participated and nine of them turned out to be among the top. In 2019, 55 participated but only five including the national institute School of Planning and Architecture made it to the toppers list.
Drastic fall
In the 2017 rankings, six colleges of the city found a place in the top 200 list with the Andhra Loyola College (ALC) topping the State with 24th rank. In the next year, it slipped to 56th position and in 2019 settled at 45th position in the country. The S.R.R. & C.V.R. Govt. College continued to remain in the top 151-200 rank band and four colleges did not even make it to the list.
Of the nine participating engineering colleges, only the Velagapudi Ramakrishna Siddhartha Engineering College stood at the 171 position and in the pharmaceutical category the K.V.S.R. Siddhartha College of Pharmaceutical Sciences made it to the top 100 consistently in the past three years.
None of the several institutions that participated in the overall and University category made it to the top list now and also in the past three years.
In 2018, 71 institutions participated in the rankings but only four got featured in the rankings.
