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The annual world university Rankings (WURs) league tables of the London-based rating agencies QS (Quacquarelli Symonds), THE (Times Higher Education), and the Shanghai Jia Tong University, usually released in August-September, are eagerly anticipated the world over not just by university managements but also media, politicians, government, academia, students, and the general public. With national prestige and reputation attached to institutional positions in these international ranking league tables, several countries including China and Russia, have launched national missions to push their best universities higher in the Top 200 league tables.
On the other hand, the response of India’s Central and state governments, whose universities have consistently failed to be ranked in the Top 200, is to dismiss the well-reputed WURs as irrelevant and inapplicable to our universities, and launch their own rating and ranking systems.
On September 29, Union human resource development (HRD) minister Smriti Irani released a National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) to rank universities countrywide with the objective of providing “an Indian context to educational aspirations and needs”. According to the minister, the rankings exercise will be conducted by an autonomous body constituted by the ministry and “will follow an Indian approach”, giving weightage to India-centric parameters such as diversity and inclusiveness apart from excellence in teaching and research.
Evidently inspired by the HRD ministry’s initiative, the Karnataka State Higher Education Council (KSHEC), an advisory body set up by the state government under the Karnataka State Higher Education Council Act, 2010 to promote excellence in higher education, has gone one better and announced an initiative to rank universities within Karnataka inter se. In an e-tender notification dated September 30, KSHEC has invited proposals from “experts” and “agencies” for “rating universities in Karnataka on year-on-year basis for a period of five years”.
The proposed KSHEC rankings exercise will cover 45 universities including 25 state government-funded, 11 deemed and nine private universities with all institutions rated and ranked on six parameters — research output, academic excellence, employability, innovation, infrastructure, inclusiveness and social impact. However, unlike the HRD ministry’s NIRF which proposes a permanent autonomous body to rank higher ed institutions, KSHEC has chosen to outsource the evaluation and assessment exercise to market research agencies.
According to S.A. Kori, executive secretary of KSHEC, the parameters, methodology and objectives of the KSHEC rankings are very different from those of the (also Bangalore-based) National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), an autonomous body established by the Union HRD ministry to assess and accredit colleges and universities countrywide. “NAAC accredits higher ed institutions based on an elaborate evaluation process whereas we will be merely rating and ranking universities. Through the rankings exercise, we hope to also prepare and familiarise the state’s 45 universities including private and deemed varsities with the rating and ranking methodologies of international agencies,” says Kori.
Since NAAC accreditation is entirely voluntary and the evaluation process is quite elaborate, only five universities — Bangalore, Gulbarga, Kannada, KLE and JSS universities — in Karnataka have been accredited by it. Once reputed for delivering high-quality higher education, Karnataka’s universities and in particular its 25 state government-funded varsities have suffered a steep fall in academic levels, infrastructure standards and reputation because of excessive political interference. In the inaugural EducationWorld India University Rankings 2015, merely four (Bangalore, Karnatak, Kuvempu and Gulbarga universities) are ranked in the Top 200 national universities league table cf. eight private universities of the state (Manipal, Christ, PES, Azim Premji, Alliance, Jain, JSS, MS Ramaiah and KLE universities).
Academics in Bengaluru have welcomed KSHEC’s initiative to rank universities with caution and provisos. “For it to be a beneficial exercise, a highly-reputed market research agency must be selected and allowed to conduct the survey in a transparent manner without interference from KSHEC or the higher education department. The rankings should provide a true picture of higher education in the state and not become an opportunity for self-appreciation and congratulation for the state government. Moreover, it will be greatly helpful if KSHEC follows up the rankings exercise with positive recommendations for improvement and upgradation,” says Dr. A.S. Seetharamu, former professor of education at the Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore and currently education advisor to the Karnataka government.
Indeed, KSHEC’s rankings initiative will serve a useful purpose only if it reflects the true condition — which is not very flattering — of the state’s 45 universities. Then the process of reform and rehabilitation can begin in right earnest.
Jeswant J.M. (Bangalore)