The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) recently released the India Rankings for 2023. This is the eighth consecutive edition of rankings of higher education institutions in five categories — overall, universities, colleges, research institutions, and innovation — and eight subject domains — engineering, management, pharmacy, medical, dental, law, architecture and planning, and agriculture and allied sectors. The NIRF evaluates institutions on five parameters: teaching, learning and resources; graduation outcome; research and professional practices; outreach and inclusivity; and perception. Ranks are assigned based on the sum of marks secured by institutions on each of these parameters. Notwithstanding some of the criticisms on the methodology adopted and the parameters chosen by the Ministry of Education, a scrutiny of the 2023 edition as well as some of the available data on higher education raises some important issues warranting policy attention.
Some issues
The first is the issue of participation of institutions. According to the Ministry of Education, in this edition of NIRF, 5,543 institutions offered themselves for ranking under overall, category-specific or domain-specific ranking. In all, 8,686 applications for ranking were submitted by these institutions. This has to be seen in conjunction with the total number of universities and colleges in India. As per the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2021, there were 1,113 universities and 43,796 colleges in 2020-21. This implies that only 12.3% of higher educational institutions participated in the ranking process. That there is near to no information on the parameters decided by NIRF for the remaining 87.7% of higher education institutions is a matter of concern, especially for a nation aspiring to reap rich demographic dividends. This issue gets accentuated further when we examine the rural-urban divide in participation. The list of top 100 colleges shows scant presence of colleges from rural areas. AISHE data show that about 43% of the universities and 61.4% colleges are in rural areas. The lack of participation of institutions from rural areas raises questions on the inherent urban bias of the ranking framework, reinforced by the choice of parameters.
