NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL RANKING FRAMEWORK

The rankings of the higher educational institutions under National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) by Hon'ble Minister of Human Resource Development, Ms.Smriti Zubin Irani was released on 4th April, 2016 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi.

Besides the following dignitaries,

1. Ms.Smriti Zubin Irani :- Hon’ble Minister of HRD

2. Sh.Vinay Sheel Oberoi :- Secretary, Dept. of Higher Education

3. Prof.Surendra Prasad :- Chairman, NBA

4. Dr.Anil Kumar Nassa :- Member Secretary, NBA

5. Dr.Ved Prakash :- Chairman, UGC

6. Dr.Anil Shasrabudhe :- Chairman, AICTE,

The ceremony was attended by Directors, Principals and representatives of prominent institutions including IITs, IIMs, IISc, etc. Prof. Ashwani Kumar, Administrator - Academics represented Dronacharya Group of Institutions, Greater Noida at the function.

The function started with the lighting of the lamp by Honorable Minister.

Inaugurating the ceremony, Sh.Vinay Sheel Oberoi said that NIRF is a methodology for ranking of universities and colleges in India and it functions as an autonomous body under an initiative by the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of HRD, Government of India. He said that the process of framing National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) began on October 9, 2014 with a constitution of 16 - member core committee under the chairmanship of Secretary (HE), Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Prof.Surendra Prasad made a detailed presentation on NIRF. He informed that the Expert Committee set - up by the UGC for developing National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) for Higher Education Institutions under the ambit of University Grants Commission, met in a one - day workshop on ranking held on August 21st, 2014 where representatives of Central Universities, NITs, IIITs, SPAs and IISERs were invited. At the workshop, it was decided inter - alia to constitute a Committee on evolving a National Ranking Framework. Parameters for ranking was mutually decided, consisting of :

1. Teaching, learning and resources (TLR);

2. Research, Consulting and Collaborative Performance (RPC);

3. Graduation Outcomes (GO);

4. Outreach and Inclusivity (OI); and

5. Perception (PR).

Within each parameter, there were a number of other categories on which institutions were graded, i.e., Infrastructure, Facilities for differently - abled persons, Percentage of students from other states and other countries; Percentage of women students and faculty, Percentage of economically and disadvantaged students and sports and extra curricular facilities available in the campuses of universities and colleges. Prof. Prasad said that initially 3800 institutions registered under different categories and finally 3500 submitted the data for evaluation.

This presentation was followed by Ms.Kylie Chiew’s, ( Regional Director, Elsevier Research Management ) presentation. She gave a detail of the procedure followed for data validation submitted by the institutions. Speaking on the occasion, Smt. Smriti Irani said that the primary purpose of this framework was to galvanize Indian institutions towards a competitive environment that exists in the world. The aim of the NIRF ranking framework has been developed for ranking universities and colleges to have wider appeal across universities and colleges. It is expected that in the coming years thousands of institutions will volunteer themselves to the ranking exercise with an aim to assess themselves on the qualitative parameters used for ranking of institutions and move upward on the quality spectrum to improve their ranking in subsequent years. “In September 2015 we promised that rankings data will be made public in the 1st week of April '16. Team MHRD delivered on that promise” said Smt.Irani.

She said that the imperative for creating India-specific rankings has come from the poor performance of our universities in world university rankings. Many higher education experts have for long argued that our universities rank low or are entirely missing from the charts because many of the parameters used by international ranking bodies such as Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (the Shanghai Rankings) - especially international reputation and internationalization but also research output are insensitive to the higher education scenario in countries such as India where the goal of improving access to higher education, whether by building new institutions in far - flung places or through caste - based reservations, has been a bigger priority than improving the quality of education.

Smt. Smriti Irani said that she sincerely hoped institutions will use this ranking framework to introspect and make sincere efforts to improve their standing, which will be beneficial for the country. She also said that NIRF will allow parents and students to check the quality of the institution of their interest and make informed choices. It further allows healthy competition between the higher educational institutions and the student benefit in the process. The objectivesis to sensitize educational institutes, empower students and parents, data processing and verification process.

Smt. Irani released the ‘India Rankings 2016’ for top 10 educational institutions in the country under the following categories : Universities, Engineering, Management and Pharmacy categories.

The NIRF 2016 ceremony ended with the Vote of Thanks delivered by Dr.Anil Kumar Nassa. He thanked the management of Scopus, Web of Science and Indian Citation Index who helped to retrieve data on publications, citations and collaborations. He also thanked the AICTE, UGC, INFLIBNET for the commendable work done.