National institutional ranking: IIT-M top college overall, IISc best university – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, continues to hog the limelight in the national rankings, leading the overall and engineering categories for the fifth and eighth consecutive years respectively, while Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, retains the best varsity spot for the eighth year in a row. Like in global rankings, in the ministry of education’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) as well, the IITs and IISc are leading the lists in various categories. IIT-Kanpur is the top institute in innovation in the NIRF 2023 rankings, while IISc is the top-ranked in research.
The eighth edition of the NIRF released on Monday observed that faculty with doctoral qualification is concentrated in top 100 institutions, while remaining have fewer faculty with doctoral degrees. This is a serious handicap since mentorship received during the doctoral training can play a vital role in preparing the faculty for a teaching career in higher education, it noted.
Seven IITs – Madras, Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Roorkee and Guwahati – figured in the top 10 in the overall rankings.
The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), which was ranked ninth last year, improved its ranking to sixth this year, while Jawaharlal Nehru University retained its 10th position in the overall category.
The ranking framework evaluates institutions in five broad generic groups on the parameters of teaching, learning and resources, research and professional practice, graduation outcomes, outreach, and inclusivity and perception.
In the universities category the trio of IISc, JNU and Jamia Millia Islamia retained their positions – first, second and third ranks respectively. The IISc continues to be the top university from the start of the rankings in 2015.
Banaras Hindu University, which was ranked sixth last year in the category, improved its rank and bagged the fifth spot.
Among private players, Manipal Academy of Higher Education is the top-ranked (6), followed by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham in Coimbatore (7) and Vellore Institute of Technology (8).
Among colleges, Miranda House, Hindu College and Presidency College-Chennai retained the first and second and third positions. Miranda House has been the top college for the seventh year in a row.
Institutions like Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) Deemed to be University, Bhubaneshwar, also improved its rank in medical sciences (from 18 to 16), dental sciences (9) and law (8) this time, as it leads the institutions in Odisha.
Pradipta Kumar Nanda, vice-chancellor of SOA, said: “The aim is to be ranked among the top 10 universities of the country within the next five years.
In Engineering, eight IITs – Madras, Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Guwahati and Hyderabad – are in the top 10 ranks.
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and Bangalore, retained the first and second ranks respectively among the B-Schools in the country. IIM-Calcutta, which was at the third spot last year, slipped to the fourth position while IIM-Kozhikode bagged the third position.
In the medical colleges category, AIIMS, Delhi, bagged the top spot, followed by PGIMER, Chandigarh, and Christian Medical College, Vellore. The trio bagged the same positions as last year. The AIIMS, Delhi, has occupied the top slot in medical stream for the sixth consecutive year.
“Changes in metrics, parameters and normalisation algorithms were introduced over the years, although the basic framework was kept intact. As a result, the ranking of institutions has largely remained consistent, especially amongst 25 top-ranked institutions, over the years, although individual ranks might have changed by a few slots for some institutions due to performance variations across institutions on some of the parameters,” a senior ministry official said.
From 2023, a new subject “agriculture and allied sectors” has been introduced in NIRF and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, has bagged the top slot in this category.