The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2018 Rankings were released by the Union Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday. NIRF Ranking is an annual exercise, as decided by the Ministry of HRD. IIT Madras was adjudged the best engineering institute this year. Whereas IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur were given second, third, fourth and fifth position respectively.
Started in 2015, NIRF outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country. The methodology judges the institutes on the basis of the parameters that broadly cover Teaching, Learning and Resources, Research and Professional Practices, Graduation Outcomes, Outreach and Inclusivity, and Perception.
IIT Madras, which has been ranked as top engineering college in 2018, was ranked as the best engineering institute in 2017 and 2016 too. IIT Kharagpur which ranked third last year, slipped down one rank this year.
It is interesting to note that other than the IITs, Chennai’s Anna University got a place at number 8 and Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai at number 10. These were the only institutes which managed to find a place in the top 10 other than the IITs of the nation.
The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) were adjudged the best among the engineering institutes for the third time in a row. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences was adjudged the top medical college, a new category added this year. The government has come out with nine categories – adding law, architecture and medical in the existing list of universities, engineering colleges, pharmacy and best colleges.
The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, was ranked first in both overall and university categories.
IIT Madras also bagged the second position after IISC, Bengaluru in the overall category. Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras, expressed his feelings about this proud achievement by quoting: “The ranking is an affirmation of the consistent hard work of our faculty, staff and students and the zeal with which we are implementing and exceeding the targets of our Strategic Plan 2020.”
As per the reports, India has around 864 universities, 40,026 colleges and 11,669 standalone institutions offering higher education in the country. Out of them, around 4,500 institutes took part in the India Rankings 2018.
It has also been confirmed by Prakash Javadekar that the central, state, deemed and private universities, who were given graded autonomy recently, would continue to get government support and funding.
On what basis the rankings has been done this year? As per NIRF, rankings are based on the Information and Data Provided by the Institutions. Data for Publications and Citations have been taken from Standard Indexing Resources, viz., Scopus, Web of Science and the Indian Citation Index. Perception data has been compiled from inputs from general public and peers. NIRF has done limited authentication of the data. However, the responsibility for the accuracy and authenticity of the data lies with the concerned institution supplying it.
