IIT Madras best educational institution in country, govt rankings say

IIT Madras, IISc Bengaluru and IIT Delhi bagged the top three positions among the educational institutions in the country in the HRD Ministry's National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings announced on Thursday. The top 10 higher education institutes in the country included seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

According to the fifth edition of the annual rankings, the top three universities are IISc Bengaluru, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Banaras Hindu University (BHU). IIM Ahmedabad has been ranked as the top business school in the country, followed by IIM Bangalore and IIM Calcutta.

Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal "Nishank" announced that Miranda College bagged the top rank among colleges, followed by Lady Sri Ram College for Women, Hindu College and St Stephen's College -- all under the Delhi University (DU). According to the rankings, the top three engineering colleges in the country are IIT Madras, IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay.

In the pharmacy category, the top institute is Delhi's Jamia Hamdard, followed by the Panjab University, Chandigarh and the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Research, Mohali. In the medical colleges category, AIIMS, Delhi bagged the top spot, followed by PGI, Chandigarh and CMC, Vellore.

The annual rankings are usually announced in April but had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "These rankings act as a guide to students for selection of universities based on a set criteria and helps universities to improve their performance on various ranking parameters and identify gaps in research and areas of improvement. This exercise has also created a habit of organising data by the institutions and most of all, these institutions attempt to become more competitive," Nishank said.

The HRD minister attributed the performance of Indian institutions in international rankings to the weightage given by them to the parameter of perception and reputation. "I do not agree to their parameters, be it the Times Higher Education Ranking or QS rankings, some of our very credible institutions have produced alumni who are spread across the globe, we are doing excellent research, we should be judged on those parameters," he said.

The ranking framework evaluates institutions on five broad generic groups of parameters -- teaching, learning and resources (TLR), research and professional practice (RP), graduation outcomes (GO), outreach and inclusivity (OI) and perception (PR). The ranks are given on the basis of the sum total of marks assigned for each of these five broad groups of parameters. The dental colleges in the country were ranked for the first time by the NIRF. Maulana Azad Institute of Dental Sciences, Manipal College of Dental Sciences and DY Patil Vidyapeeth were ranked the top three institutes in this category.

The top three institutions for architecture studies are IIT Kharagpur, IIT Roorkee and National Institute of Technology, Calicut. The top three law schools are -- National Law School of India University, Bengaluru; National Law University, New Delhi and Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad.

A total of 3,771 universities and higher educational institutions across the country participated in the ranking process. The QS World University Rankings were announced on Wednesday, in which two IITs -- Delhi and Bombay -- and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru maintained their positions in the top 200, despite losing some points.

The QS rankings is the second consecutive international list where Indian universities have fared poorly compared to 2019. Last week, the Times Higher Education (THE) Asia University rankings also showed that Indian institutes have slipped in their standings.