As per the NIRF ranking, GU has slipped a few places in its ranking as compared to the previous year while IIT Guwahati has maintained its 7th rank this year as well Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati secured the 7th rank while Gauhati University (GU) was placed at the 39th rank in the recently released rankings of top colleges and universities across the country by the central ministry of human resource development.
The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings list the top 100 universities in India dividing them on the basis of several criteria.
GU has scored the 39th rank among universities and has been placed at the 61st rank in the overall category. However, this year its ranking dipped in comparison to last year when it scored the 27th rank in universities category and 43rd rank in the overall category.
As per the NIRF, a category in which the university fared well was ‘teaching, learning and resources’ (TLR). Evaluation under this criterion takes into account the student strength including PhD students, faculty-student ratio with emphasis on permanent faculty, total budget and its utilisation and combined metric for faculty with PhD and experience.
Professor Amit Choudhary, director of GU’s Institute of Distance and Open Learning (IDOL) said that with the release of rankings, authorities have been able to identify the areas which need improvement.
“One of the prime areas which we need to focus on at GU is faculty publications. Another important parameter at the all India level is peer perception in which we haven’t done very well,” informed Choudhary.
He added that in the NIRF, universities are also judged on the basis of facilities provided for the differently-abled students. “We have the facilities in place in some places but we will make the campus more accessible for the differently-abled in the coming months,” said Choudhary.
Head of the English department at GU, Dr Asha Kuthari Chaudhuri told G Plus that GU has a sound and forward-looking academic fraternity.
“But to come at par with other top universities in the country, we need to connect development in our discipline with the larger academic world and this requires a fair amount of funding. Since it is a state university, we depend heavily on the government for funding,” she said adding that if the government helps GU with the funding to better the infrastructure, it is bound to do better.
She further said that there are still a number of posts which currently lie vacant and the faculty strength needs to be improved.
IIT Guwahati retains 7th position
IIT Guwahati has retained the 7th position among the top engineering institutions of the country in the NIRF rankings. In the overall ranking, the institute was placed at the 12th position.
Sharing his thoughts about the ranking, Gautam Biswas, Director, IIT Guwahati said, “Our performances in engineering and sciences are good. In order to move forward we need to work more on the interdisciplinary emerging areas. We need to minimise the gap between science and engineering. We need to improve in the overall category too.”
He added that this can be done by paying more attention to some of the related areas pertaining to management sciences. He feels that culture of management and soft skills enhance employment and entrepreneurial scope for the students and such parameters help in advancing the overall rank of the Institute.
In NIRF-India ranking 2018 institutions were ranked in nine disciplines namely universities, engineering, colleges, management, pharmacy, medical, architecture, law, including the overall rankings of the institutions.
The parameters for assessment broadly include ‘teaching, learning and resources’, ‘research and professional practices’, ‘graduation outcomes’, ‘outreach and inclusivity’ and ‘perception’.