Higher education: Soon, India to have own ranking system
NEW DELHI: India is set to evolve its own system of ranking of higher educational institutions. Designed with the Indian situation in mind, the new system will stress on outcomes and that ranking of institutions should not be confused with accreditation that is already being done by National Assessment and Accreditation Council.
Late last month, senior HRD officials, directors of IITs, IIMs, NITs and representatives of CII and FICCI met to work out the ranking system. “We have got six groupings of outcomes on which institutions will be ranked,” a senior HRD official said.
These will be academic performance, teaching-learning, learning resources, graduation outcome, global MoUs and impact/innovation done by institutions. Ranking for science, engineering, liberal arts, social sciences, medicine, law and business administration will be done differently. IITs, IIMs, School of Planning & Architecture, Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University have been asked to look into outcomes again.
Though the weightage for each of the six outcomes will be finalized in the last meeting of the core team, a senior HRD ministry official said, “It will be markedly different from ranking system followed internationally.” “For instance, Times Higher Education gives 30% to citations, QS Ranking gives 40% to academic reputation and ARW Ranking system gives 30% to alumni award/faculty award,” he said.
In the new Indian ranking system, he said, weightage on a factor like ‘perception of an institute’ will be less. “We do not have too many higher educational institutions that can be on top merely on the basis of perception. In case higher weightage is given to perception factor, few good ones will permanently occupy the top slot,” he said.
Instead, more weightage will be given to teaching/learning, graduation outcomes and research. Each of the six groupings consists of various sub-factors. For instance, in case of graduation outcome, sub-factors that will be looked are employment level, percentage of the self-employed, percentage of those pursuing higher education and those who are unemployed.
The official said it also needs to be sorted out how frequently rankings will be done. “Most likely it will be once in two years. We will also finalize if a new body is needed to carry out the ranking,” he said.
Source: The Times of India