25/07/2022
India announces rankings of local higher education institutions in the National Institute Ranking Framework India Ranking 2022
The Indian Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan released rankings for the country’s universities according to India’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2022 on 15 July 2022.
The NIRF was launched in September 2015 by the Education Ministry and was the first-ever effort by the government to rank higher education institutions in the country. This year, 7,524 educational institutions took part in the NIRF, which is an increase of nearly 1,200 institutions compared to last year.
The top three institutions in this year’s overall ranking were the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras; the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore; and the IIT Bombay. These results were very similar to those in 2021, with nine of last year’s top 10 institutions appearing among the top 10 institutions for 2022, and the top eight positions each held by the same institutions as last year.
The parameters assessed in the methodology include teaching, learning and resources; research and professional practices; graduation outcomes; outreach and inclusivity; and perception. The ranking is undertaken across eleven categories, which include the overall ranking of leading institutions as well as separate categories for universities, colleges, research institutions, and specialist institutions in the fields of engineering, management, medicine, pharmacy, architecture, law and dentistry.
Detailed rankings can be found at https://www.nirfindia.org/Home
British Council Comments
These rankings will be important to UK institutions developing partnerships in India. Aside from giving an overall view of the strength of different Indian HEIs, the rankings are also taken into account by the Indian government when giving regulatory approval for new projects. Indian institutions ranked in the NIRF top 100 are automatically eligible to enter an agreement with foreign education institutions for twinning, joint and dual degree programmes; these institutions will also be likely to be permitted to open branch campuses abroad when those regulations are finalised.
From the Indian perspective the NIRF rankings were developed to drive competition and improve performance amongst Indian higher education institutions. Participation has increased over the seven years from its inception, driven partly by the way the government is now using rankings for many regulatory decisions such as automatic approvals for TNE partnerships. However the overall level of participation is still relatively low, with only 14 per cent of India’s 55,165 HEIs taking part in 2022.
Domestic rankings are particularly important to UK HEIs looking to understand the Indian HE landscape, because few Indian institutions take a high position in international rankings such as the QS or THE world university rankings. This is mostly attributed to low scores on internationalisation related indices such as international faculty and international students, and this is something that the NIRF does not consider in its framework. The Indian government came up with its own framework to counter the disappointing results of its domestic institutions in the international rankings and not having confidence in the methodology used as they believed it to be based on perception and not considering key measures like access to education and inclusivity which is of paramount importance to a country like India.
Even with the framework differences, we find that the same top Indian institutions have been consistently doing well in both the NIRF and international rankings such as the IISC Bangalore, IIT Mumbai, IIT Delhi IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur and Delhi University.
For any questions, please contact Sandeepa Sahay
Further reading
https://www.collegedekho.com/news/nirf-overall-rankings-2022-28469/
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