It is a matter of augury that National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) has completed a decade of its existence, having been launched in September, 2015. It has commenced its work with the declaration of its first edition of Rankings in 2016.

The latest edition, tenth in the series was announced on September 4. While it is appreciable that the Ranking Framework has matured into a comprehensive and data driven evaluation system, similar exercise is being done by other agencies like NAAC and NBA. In addition, the All-India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) is compiling data for the past over a decade.

It is not clear as to why so many national level bodies are involved in carrying out the similar job. May be keeping this in view, the National Education Policy, 2020 has proposed to create a single data Platform in the name of ‘One Nation One Data’. It may be hoped that these issues would be sorted out at the earliest.

The primary aim of this write up is to highlight a few of the significant aspects that are connected to the Ranking. First, as per the 2025 Rankings, the number of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) covered are 14,163, which included Universities, Colleges and other stand-alone outfits. Against this, there are about 58,643 HEIs as per the data of AISHE. Therefore, the coverage of the NIRF is just about 24.2 per cent.

In spite of the fact that the Ranking Framework has laid down a criterion to be eligible to participate in the Rankings, it may not cross about 30 per cent. It is thus high time to ponder over as to how the reach can be enhanced, so that every HEI is made an integral part of the process.

Further, the NIRF is choosing to declare Ranks up to a specific number and leaving others in dark as to their standing in the network of institutions. For instance, NIRF declares up to 200 ranks only in case of universities and up to only 300 in case of colleges, as against the vast number of participating institutions.

The new development in this regard is that it has chosen to communicate the score card to every institution now individually. But their rank is not indicated. Therefore, it is logical to expect that every participating institution has the right to now its position, even one secures the last rank.

Second, it is noticeable that the ranking agency has diversified its methodology and now covering seventeen categories of institutions, which include the eight subject areas also. Keeping in view of the changing dimensions, it has also attempted to cover skill universities, open universities, innovation institutes and institutes that focus on the realisation of sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The number of institutions covered under the above new categories is very small and efforts need to be made to enhance the canvass. In the category of subject domain also, the coverage is very limited. For one thing the NIRF feels happy for creating greater awareness on the part of the HEIs in the country and making them to be conscious of improving their quality of education.

True that the number of HEIs from India have swelled from just 1 in Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) in 2015 to 15 in 2025. Similarly, the world rankings have also jumped significantly from 14 to 54 in in QS and from 17 to 128 in THE during the period between 2015 and 2026.

Third is about the ranking methodology followed by the agency. The ranking framework comprises of 19 parameters organised into 5 broad groups, which included: (i) Teaching, Learning and Resources (TLR), (ii) Research and Professional Practice (RP), (iii) Graduation Outcomes (GO), (iv) Outreach and Inclusivity (O&I) and (v) Perception (PR).

Many of the lessons that need to be learnt cling on to these. Pertaining to the Teaching, Learning and Resources three major aspects are taken into consideration, which included the quality of faculty, their experience and the faculty-student ratio.

Regarding the quality dimension of the faculty, it is highlighted that the faculty with Ph.D. are only about 58.56 per cent and their average experience with less than 8 years is significantly high at 34.17 per cent.

As a matter of fact, many universities and colleges are carrying on the teaching-learning process with a substantial number of contract, ad-hoc and guest faculty, whose tenure is extended year after year, impacting the quality of higher education. Unfortunately, the faculty-student ratio is also high beyond the norms prescribed by the UGC (1:15 or revised 1:20). About 62 per cent of the HEIs have FSR above the specified limits.

In terms of the research and professional practice, judged from the point of view of publications and citations, the performance of the participating institutions is very dismal. The productivity in terms of publication of research papers is just 1.76 per faculty in the overall and college categories.

It is only in the context of Universities, it is anything above 7.71 per faculty. As per the norms of accrediting agencies, anything below 2 per faculty secures ‘o’ points only. The astonishing fact is that there are HEIs with ‘zero’ publications.

In the overall category, 136 out of 1757 and 573 out of 1821 in case of colleges and 530 out of 909 in the domain specialisation of Management, faculty have no publications at all.

During 1950s, India was a leading nation in the context of international research publication that are worth mentioning, producing about a quarter of world productivity. Though claimed to have scaled to third position from seventh in this regard, the percentage contribution is not above 7-8 per cent.

In terms of citations too, the position is lack lustre. The average citations per paper are noted as 8.71, which does not qualify for any marks in the accreditation evaluation. A comparison of the same at the global level indicates that the India’s position is unenvious at only 13.44 as against 33.36 and even the H-Index, is low at 925 against 3,213 for USA. These issues need to be noted while deliberating on the NIRF and its rankings. In terms of the Graduation Outcomes also, the number of faculty showing interest to register for Ph.D. and completing the same in the prescribed period is rare. The percentage of faculty registering for pursuing research is less than 10, owing to the fact that the Higher Education Sector in India is engulfed by the recruitment of part time and contingent faculty.

It is heartening to note that the enrolments are happening from outside the states also, but the students from other countries are almost negligible. It may be noted that Covid-19 had a deleterious effect on this segment. There had been a phenomenal decrease in the inflow from even African countries. It would be in the fitness of things to focus attention on the Asian and European countries.

The final parameter having impact on the rankings is about the perception of the peers and employers. It is gratifying that this is taken as the most invaluable parameter for judging the performance of HEIs in India. But unfortunately, HEIs of the country have no proper connect either with the Alumni or with the recruiters.

Usually, an email or mobile survey is conducted to elicit the opinions of the stakeholders. In the Indian context, these are always a damp squib, one gets no reply or a reply worth noting.

This phenomenon requires a total overhaul, in an attempt to convince the stakeholders as to how significant it would be to participate in these surveys and share their genuine opinion.

Above all, there is yet another significant issue of inconsistencies reigning in the data sets filled in by the participating institutions. There is an element of dishonesty being reported in the submission of data, leading to higher rankings in the NIRF and lower grades in NAAC and NBA. It has been brought to the news time and again that higher ranks in NIRF are not supported by the similar standing in others. Of late, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) is raised against the NIRF stating that rankings are declared based on the unverified and self-reported data sets.

In response to the same, NIRF has attempted to recheck the data submitted by the institutions and finally declared the 2025 rankings. This episode brings to the fore the fact not everything is alright with the ranking process. It is hoped that this would be looked into seriously in the next ranking process. Lest, this should get obviated when there is only one ranking/grading agency taking care of the process asper the reform envisaged in the NEP, 2020.

(The writer is former Vice Chancellor, Acharya Nagarjuna University)