‘Fund And Faculty’ Count In Higher Education

Context: The 6^th edition of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) has been released recently, which showcases the massive gap between the best and the rest institutes in India.

Benefits of ranking institutions

• Selection of best institutions: It helps students, faculty, and prospective employer to choose institutions for admission, to enhance chances for securing research funding, and target campuses for hiring.
• Promote Competition: It may promote competition among institutions, which can lead to an overall improvement in their quality.
• Provide Privilege: Ranking also leads to privileges such as getting autonomy, power to offer open and distance mode programmes, and permission to enter into collaboration with foreign universities.
• Improve deficient areas: Ranking institutions helps to identify areas of improvement and then proactively to work to overcome those deficiencies and thus ensure quality and promote excellence.

Highlights of 6^th edition of NIRF Report: Few ‘islands of excellence surrounded by the sea of mediocrity’

• Research performance correlates ranking of the university: The best university in India secured 92.16% on research performance, which drastically declined to 60.52% for the 10^th best university.
  • The 20^th and the 50^th best universities, respectively, secured 50.32% and 28.69%. In case of 100^th best university, the RPP declined to 4.35%.
  • Scholars: Top 10 universities had an average 2,627 research scholars, whereas those ranked between 41-50 had only 1,036 PhD students, and bottom 10 had no more than 165 scholars.
• Higher the expenditure on salaries of staff, higher the ranking of university: Average annual expenditure on salaries for top 10 is estimated to be Rs.391.72 crore, whereas universities ranked between 41-50 were found to be spending only Rs.119.64 crore on salaries.
  • And those ranked between 91-100, spent only Rs.79.26 crore.

Conclusion: The fund and the faculty, the two most neglected areas, are critical not only for research performance but also for the overall ranking, as the two bear a high degree of positive correlation.