NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL RANKING FRAMEWORK (NIRF)

Overview of NIRF
• MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Development) has released Ranking System Framework for Higher Educational Institutions of India. This is the first time that a reliable, transparent and authentic ranking system is being implemented in the country for Higher Education.

Objective

• To bring fair competition among Indian universities.
• Now parents and students will have worth information about the quality of a particular university, college or vocational institution.

In what background was NIRF developed?

In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THEWUR) 2014
Not a single Indian university could make it to the list of top 275 universities in the world and
Not a single institute of engineering & technology figured in the top 100 institutes in the category.

Then some educationists argued that that India should have its own system of ranking educational institutions based on certain India-specific parameters.
In this background NIRF was launched in 2015 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).

What are the Parameters?

• The parameters broadly cover:

 

PARAMETERS

 

  

COMPONENTS
Teaching, Learning & Resources ·     Student Strength including Doctoral Students

·      Faculty-student ratio with emphasis on permanent faculty

·   Combined metric for Faculty with PhD (or equivalent) and Experience

·    Total Budget and Its Utilisation
Research & Professional Practices ·    Combined metric for Publications

·    Combined metric for Quality of Publications

·     IPR and Patents: Filed, Published, Granted and Licensed

·     Footprint of Projects and Professional Practice And Executive Development Programs
Graduation Outcomes ·    Combined % for Placement, Higher Studies, and Entrepreneurship (GPHE)

·    Metric for University Examinations: GUE

·      Median Salary

·       Metric for Graduating Students Admitted Into Top Universities (GTOP)

·      Metric for Number of Ph.D. Students Graduated GPHD
Outreach and Inclusivity ·       Percent Students from other states/countries (Region Diversity RD)

·      Percentage of Women (Women students + faculty)

·      Economically and Socially Challenged Students

·       Facilities for Physically Challenged Students
Perception ·        Peer Perception: Employers and Research Investors

·       Peer Perception: Academics

·       Public Perception

·       Competitiveness

What can be further done to further improve NIRF?

  1. NIRF should be made mandatory for all higher education institutions. By this it will make the institutions realise the need to improve their quality
  2. The government should categorise institutions and disciplines as Central universities, State universities, government-funded/aided and private sector and a separate ranking list should also be prepared. It is because it is unfair to make institutions funded by the government to compete self-financed institutions (though, it is a fact that some private educational institutions are far better than government-run institutions in terms of infrastructure, faculty, quality of education, and so on).
  3. The data and information provided by the institutions that apply for ranking should be thoroughly verified by the government and those providing false data should be named and shamed.

Suggestions on some parameters to improve quality of higher education system

Parameter Observation & suggestion
Teaching, learning and resources

 

 ·         In many private educational institutions, quality of teachers is not up to the mark as they are not paid on par with their counterparts working in government or government-aided institutions.

·         Thus pay to faculties should be increased.

 
Research and professional practices

 

 ·         It is not the quantity but the quality, originality, relevance and usefulness of research papers that matter.

·         Of late the research papers have been characterised by manufacturing of data, plagiarism and academic dishonesty.

·         Thus a check should be there on this.

 
Outreach and inclusivity (OI)

 

 ·         Working in our local areas is much more than charity for higher education institutions.

·         Just like Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Institute Social Responsibility (ISR) should be emphasised.

·         Each educational institution should adopt a few villages where the faculty and students should interact with the villagers and impart their knowledge to the rural people and learn local lessons from them.

 

India rankings

 

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