Prakash Javadekar, India’s minister of human resource development responsible for higher education, has said public universities that do not take part in the country’s rankings could face penalties, possibly funding cuts.

The warning was issued after several universities failed to provide data and documentation for the latest national rankings released last week. 

For example, some of the 90 constituent colleges of Delhi University did not provide data and as a result the ranking of the university as a whole – it was seventh on the universities’ list – may not be an accurate reflection of its strength. 

Participation in the rankings, first introduced three years ago, had been optional. This year 4,500 institutions took part in the ministry’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings compared to 3,300 in 2017, but a ministry source said the ministry had expected some 10,000 universities and colleges to provide information. 

Javadekar said last Tuesday that all public colleges and universities must take part. “Those public institutions that will not take part in it will face a funding cut," he said. 

This year’s national ranking groups institutions into nine separately ranked lists comprising the overall category, universities, colleges, and engineering, law, management, medical, pharmacy, and architecture institutions. Medical, law and architecture institutions have been ranked for the first time this year. 

Top institutions in the latest rankings are mainly in India’s largest cities with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru the best institution overall in the country for the third time in succession, although officials said its score had declined slightly. Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Madras, Bombay, Delhi and Kharagpur held the next four places with Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi ranked sixth.

IISc topped the university ranking, followed by JNU, Banaras Hindu University, Anna University in Chennai, the University of Hyderabad, Jadavpur University in Kolkata and Delhi University.

Under colleges, which receive a lower weighting for research, five of the top 10 were constituent colleges of Delhi University, with Miranda House and St Stephen’s, which participated for the first time, topping the list. 

Parameters tweaked

The parameters used for the India rankings 2018 are broadly similar to those used in previous years “with some tweaking here and there” based on feedback from the institutions, Surendra Prasad, the chairman of the National Board of Accreditation, which accredits national technical programmes such as management and engineering, said during the release of the ranking results in New Delhi on 3 April.

Institutions are analysed and ranked based on five parameters, including teaching, learning and resources, with a weighting of 30% or 40% depending on the category of the institution; research and professional practice – 30% (or 15% for colleges); graduation outcomes – 20% (25% for colleges); outreach and inclusivity – 10%; and perception 10%.

For colleges, the weightings for research and development have been reduced this year “to recognise the fact that general degree colleges are mostly engaged in undergraduate teaching”, Prasad said. Correspondingly, weights for teaching, learning and graduation outcomes have been increased. 
 

For evaluating research impact in particular, parameters for quality of publications have been enhanced to include the number of highly cited papers. This year the weighting for graduate outcomes has been increased, while earnings from patents has been left out for lack of data. 

Some of the information is available on the All India Survey of Higher Education – a government statistical database. But the ministry relies on the institutions themselves to provide details on patents, publications, research projects and other information not available on the portal. 

Accuracy and omissions

“We had to leave out what we consider to be an important measure of performance – a sub-parameter under research called earnings from patents and IPR [intellectual property rights],” Prasad said. Although the government considers it an important measure, there was clearly a “lack of understanding” by self-reporting institutions of what it means.

The intention is to bring it back in future years, Prasad said. 

While alluding to some “creative data inflation” and “some very rude administrators” during the data-collection phase, Prasad said by and large “institutions have become more meticulous in providing accurate data”.

“Although there are a few concerns – a few black sheep do sneak into our rankings somehow every year – generally speaking there is an improvement in the quality of data that we now have to handle, over the previous years.”

From the analysis of the data the ministry also found a correlation between the general rank of an institution in a given field and the corresponding research rank of the same institution, based on outside citations data and publications, Prasad noted, an indication that the merit-based system of Indian rankings was comparable to international rankings.