Extra funding to educational varsities will be linked to govt ranking: HRD Minister

Educational institutes, which rank higher in the government’s rankings based on the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), will be given additional grants and funding by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). The ministry has brought out the India Rankings 2017 based on NIRF where Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore topped the overall list of institutes.

Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Human Resource Development, said, “These rankings will help increase the credibility of these institutes. From now on, the grants/funds to institutes will based on their rankings as per NIRF. This will promote healthy competition.”

Data infographics by Ritesh Presswala

NIRF was approved by the MHRD and launched in September 29, 2015. This is the second year of the ranking. In 2017, general degree colleges have also been made part of the ranking.

Apart from the overall ranks, categories like engineering, management, pharmacy, universities and colleges have been classified in various buckets. Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad bagged the top slot among management institutes while Indian Institute of Technology, Madras secured the top rank among engineering institutes.

While it was a surprise to see many top institutions like Presidency University of Kolkata and St.Stephen’s College, Delhi missing from the list, Javadekar said that this could be because several institutes did not participate in the ranking. He added that now that funding to the institutes is linked to the ranking, many more institutes will come forward and be a part of the process.

He added that this will also be helpful for students as well as parents to choose an appropriate institute. Apart from using metrics like placements, faculty qualifications, peer perception, public perception to rank the institutes, MHRD has also included employer perception to rank them from this year onwards.

Among universities, IISc Bangalore topped the list followed by Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Banaras Hindu University. JNU also secured the sixth position among the overall rankings.