Depending on their areas of operation, institutions have been ranked under 11 different categories – overall, university, colleges, engineering, management, pharmacy, law, medical, architecture, dental and research.[2] The Framework uses several parameters for ranking purposes like resources, research, and stakeholder perception. These parameters have been grouped into five clusters and these clusters were assigned certain weights. These weights depend on the type of institution. About 3500 institutions voluntarily participated in the first round of rankings.[3]
Background
The 2017 rankings were released by MHRD on 3 April 2017.[4] While in its first rankings released in 2016, NIRF had four categories (Universities, Engineering, Management and Pharmacy), in 2017, two more categories namely, Overall and College, were added. Around 3,000 institutions participated in the rankings.[5]
On 3 April 2018, the 2018 NIRF rankings were released with an increased number of participating institutions over the previous year.[6]
The 2019 NIRF ranking was released on 8 April 2019 in 9 categories: Overall, Universities, Engineering, Colleges, Management, Pharmacy, Medical, Architecture, and Law.[7]
For the 2020 rankings, around 3,800 institutions participated in the process, a 20% increase over 2019.[8] The 2020 ranked lists were released by MHRD on 11 June 2020. For the first time, dental institutes were placed in a new category.[9]
Formation
MHRD organized a one-day workshop on 21 August 2014 on evolving methodologies for the ranking of institutions of higher education in India. The meeting resolved to establish a committee for building a national ranking framework. Later it was also decided to appoint representatives of central universities for the proposed committee. Based on these decisions, a core committee consisting of 16 members was constituted on 29 October 2014 with secretary (HE, MHRD, as chairperson and additional secretary (TE), MHRD, as member-secretary. The other members were the vice-chancellors of Delhi University, EFL University, Central University of Gujarat and JNU, the directors of the IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, NIT Tiruchirappalli, NIT Warangal, IIIT&M Gwalior, IISER Bhopal, SPA Delhi, NAAC, and chairperson of NBA.[10]
The terms of reference of the committee were:
Suggest a National Framework for performance measurement and ranking of
Institutions;
Programmes;
Suggest the organizational structure, institutional mechanism and processes for implementation along with time-lines of the National Ranking Framework.
Suggest a mechanism for financing of the Scheme on National Ranking Framework.
The core committee identified a set of measurable parameters to be used as metrics for ranking the institutions. These parameters were grouped into five major headings. The committee suggested the weightages to be assigned to various groups of parameters in the case of institutions of engineering education and left the task of carrying out similar exercises for institutions of other disciplines to other competent agencies. The initial draft of the report was prepared by Surendra Prasad, chairman, National Board of Accreditation and Member of the core committee.
The University Grants Commission constituted an expert committee on 9 October 2015 to develop a framework for the ranking of universities and colleges in India and the framework developed by this expert committee has been incorporated into NIRF.[11] The core committee also suggested a framework for ranking institutions offering management education also.[12] The All India Council for Technical Education developed parameters and metrics for ranking institutions offering pharmacy education[13] and also architecture education.[14]
Recommendations of the core committee
The following are some of the recommendations of the core committee:[10]
The metrics for ranking of engineering institutions should be based on the parameters agreed upon by the core committee.
The parameters have been organized into five broad heads or groups and each group has been divided into suitable sub-groups. Each broad head has an overall weight assigned to it. Within each head, the sub-heads should also have appropriate weight distributions.
A suitable metric has been proposed which computes a score under each sub-head. The sub-head scores are then added to obtain scores for each individual head. The overall score is computed-based on the weights allotted to each head. The overall score can take a maximum value of 100.
The committee recommended the classification of institutions into two categories:
Category A institutions: These are institutions of national importance set up by Acts of Parliament, State Universities, Deemed-to-be Universities, Private Universities and other autonomous institutions.
Category B institutions: These are institutions affiliated to a University and do not enjoy full academic autonomy.
Parameters and their weightages
Engineering, management, pharmacy and architecture institutions
The approved set of parameter groups and the weightages assigned to them in respect of institutions offering programmes in engineering, management, pharmacy and architecture are given in the following table.
Parameters
Category A institutions
Category B institutions
Teaching, learning and resources (TLR)
0.30
0.30
Research, professional practice and collaborative performance (RPC)
0.30
0.20
Graduation outcome (GO)
0.15
0.25
Outreach and inclusivity (OI)
0.15
0.15
Perception (PR)
0.10
0.10
Overall and colleges
The approved set of parameter groups and the weightages assigned to them in respect of overall rating and for colleges are given in the following table, for 2018.
The rankings have been criticized as manipulative by students and some academics.[24] In spite of the criticism, the government has done little to modify the methodologies or results of the rankings. The list was criticized for being incomplete and incoherent in 2017.[25] Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi raised objection on 2017 NIRF ranking, accusing it of being based on incomplete data.[26]
In 2021, Professor Anil Kumar Tripathi, director of the Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University criticized the NIRF University rankings, accusing it to compare institutions with same budget but varying number of students. He said that "IISc no doubt, is the top institution in the country. Banaras Hindu University (BHU), however, is a different kind of educational institution. Both institutions have almost the same budget but the same amount of money caters to a large number of students, teachers and infrastructure at BHU. In comparison to IISc the money available is about five to ten times lesser in our university because of the sheer size".[27]
In response to a PIL, on 27 march 2025 Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court puts stay order on publishing NIRF ranking for 2025. PIL petition has claimed that NIRF continuously providing rank and unjustly promoting to multiple number of institutions on the basis of fake and fraud information from past many years without cross-checking, even those institutions failed to meet basic medical education standard. Whole ranking process is based on lack of transprency since NBA collect The data direct from the institution websites without any cross verification for authenticity, resulting in the publication of manipulated data in the ranking list.[28]
On May 10, Madras High Court dismissed the PIL petition and lifted the interim stay on release of NIRF ranking noting that, "Upon reviewing the materials on record, the petition appeared to be premature, as there was insufficient data available to enable a comparison or to assess the accuracy of the rankings."[29]
Another article highlighted that how skewed focus / weightage on few parameters is leading to irrational overall scores and therefore erroneous rankings. In particular, practical signals like "Placement percentage" and "Median compensation awarded to students" are assigned very low weightage, with respect to parameters like "Number of PhD students" and "University Exams".[30]
↑ "India Rankings 2016". National Institutional Ranking Framework. MHRD, Government of India. Archived from the original on 20 April 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
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