‘Fund And Faculty’ Count In Higher Education

The Hindu     21st September 2021     Save    

Context: The 6th 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 6th 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 10th best university.
    • The 20th and the 50th best universities, respectively, secured 50.32% and 28.69%. In case of 100th 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.