The new version of the National Institutional Ranking Framework highlights the huge gap between the best and the rest
sixth edition of National Institutional Ranking Framework for Higher Education (NIRF) It was released by the Union Education Minister on 9 September 2021. Jubilants are those who have made it to the top 100 or have improved their ranking or score by a few notches. Downcasts are those who have slipped in rank or score but are still upbeat as they are in the coveted list. Frustrated, they will already be busy finding their faults. Unranked people can prepare with their excuses and commitment to do better next year. Since NIRF only ranks in the top 100, an estimated 935 universities are, in any case, bound to remain closed. Every higher educational institution in the country goes through a stroke of hope and despair several times a year when the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) rankings are published.
Ranking can offer many advantages. Its signaling effect can help students, faculty and prospective employers to choose institutions for admission, respectively, increasing their chances of securing research funding and targeting campuses for hiring. This can promote competition among institutions, which in turn leads to an overall improvement in their quality. As in the current policy, the ranking leads to privileges such as gaining autonomy, the power to offer open and distance mode programs, and the permission to enter into collaborations with foreign universities.
The most useful purpose that the ranking can serve – but has so far been overlooked – is to identify areas of improvement and then actively work to address those shortcomings and thus ensure quality and promote excellence. Is. This will reduce the huge gap that currently exists between the best and the rest of the higher education institutions. After all, no nation can afford some ‘islands of excellence surrounded by a sea of mediocrity’, which condemns them to eternal inferiority.
basis of metrics
Universities must offer quality dissemination of knowledge, skills and application orientation, but to achieve excellence, they must contribute significantly to research, publications, patents and innovations. Since the performance of universities cannot be measured by a single indicator, they are evaluated, and ranked on a metric of measure. Much of the research attaches great importance to production, quality and its impact. ARWU ranks universities solely on the basis of their research performance while THEE and QS give 60% and 20% weightage to research, respectively. Following the trend, NIRF gives 30% weightage to Research Performance and Business Practices (RPP).
This, in turn, is measured through the combined metric of publications (PU, 35%), the combined metric of the quality of publications (QP, 35%), IPR and patents (IPR, 15%) and the footprint of projects and business practice. Is. FPPP, 15%).
Analyzed in this context, the top 100 universities of NIRF also present a very disturbing trend which needs immediate attention. nirf 2020 ranking shows that the best university in the country scored 92.16 per cent on research performance. The score for the 10th best university has dropped drastically to 60.52%. And going down, the 20th and 50th best universities scored 50.32% and 28.69% respectively. In the case of the 100th best university, the RPP dropped to 4.35%. It is not difficult to estimate the condition of the remaining 935 universities in the country.
on salary and research
NIRF does not disclose data on the total number of teachers, but reports that it includes total expenditure on salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff and the total number of PhD students enrolled in each of the ranked universities. Using both of the above as a proxy for university size in terms of faculty members and research staff, they were ranked against research and professional practice (RPP) ranks grouped into 10 categories.
The data reveals in no uncertain terms that, on average, the more employees’ salaries are spent, the higher the university’s ranking. For example, the average annual expenditure on salaries of top 10 universities is ₹391.72 crore. In contrast, universities ranked between 41-50 were found to spend only ₹ 119.64 crore on salaries. Expectedly, those ranked at the bottom between 91-100 only spent ₹79.26 crore. Same is the case with researchers. The data shows that the top 10 universities in the NIRF had an average of 2,627 research students, while those ranked between 41-50 had only 1,036 PhD students. Strengthening the trend, universities ranked in the bottom 10 had no more than 165 research scholars. The higher the number of research scholars, the higher the rank of the universities in terms of RPP. What was previously known intuitively is now proved by data.
To conclude, funds and faculty, the two most neglected sectors, are important not only for research performance but also for overall ranking, as both have a high degree of positive correlation.
Furqan Qamar, Professor in Finance at Jamia Millia Islamia, is a former General Secretary of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) and is also the former Vice Chancellor of the Central University of Himachal Pradesh and the University of Rajasthan.
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