Page 34 - EducationWorld May 2022

Cover Story
E VEN IF IT SOUNDS in that order.

somewhat immod-
Likewise in the 2021-22 league
table of government universities,
est, a unique feature
of the richly detailed
Science, Bangalore, Tata Institute
annual Education- the Top 4 were Indian Institute of
World India Higher of Fundamental Research, Mumbai,
Education Rankings (EWIHER) — Jawaharlal Nehru University (liberal
introduced in 2013 and now spread arts and humanities) and Delhi Uni-
over two issues (May-June) — is versity (multidisciplinary). Clearly,
continuous improvement and refine- the practice of assessing and rank-
ment. A decade ago, we began rating ing these institutions with diverse
and ranking undergrad Arts, Science curriculums and academic objectives
and Commerce, and Engineering and required further refinement.
Technology colleges and B-schools. Fortunately, the detailed architec-
Subsequently, we introduced the ture of the annual EducationWorld
concept of rating and ranking private India School Rankings (EWISR,
and government higher education Palety: new architecture estb.2007) initiated by your editors
institutions separately, given their 15 years ago and which has since
vastly differing institutional cultures. colleges. Moreover, our league table been fine-tuned into the world’s larg-
Eight years ago, we stopped evalu- of engineering colleges was restricted est and most comprehensive schools
ating and ranking the well-funded to private engineering colleges which rankings survey, provided a model
and heavily-subsidised Central admit 98 percent of school-leavers. for refining EWIHER 2022-23.
government-promoted 23 IITs The prime objective of these EWISR ranks schools in three
(Indian Institutes of Technology), 31 classifications is to provide student main categories — day, legacy
NITs (National Institutes of Technol- — rather than institution — friendly boarding and international, and
ogy) in the engineering and technol- evaluations of undergrad colleges. several sub-categories under each:
ogy league tables, and eliminated the Similarly in the case of universi- day (co-ed-day, day-cum-boarding,
country’s 20 IIMs (Indian Institutes ties, reader feedback indicated that boys, girls), boarding (co-ed, boys
of Management) from the annual although for the past two years, the and girls) and international (day,
EWIHER. annual EWIHER ranked private and day-cum-boarding and residential).
The rationale of these omissions government universities separately Drawing from the architecture of
is that they routinely top the league inter se, they were lumped together this model, this year we present the
tables of all media publications, under these broad heads regardless EWIHER government and private
including India Today, and the busi- of specialisation. For instance in the universities in 15 separate, discrete
ness dailies. Your editors reasoned EWIHER 2021-22 private universi- league tables to facilitate rational
that including the well-resourced ties league table, the essentially pro- evaluation and comparison.
and subsidised Central government- fessional education-oriented Manipal Therefore, last year’s private and
promoted IITs and IIMs would be Academy of Higher Education, Birla government universities’ composite
repetition and replication of main- Institute of Science and Technology, league tables have been disaggregat-
stream media publications, and of Pilani, and the multidisciplinary Am- ed and filtered. In EWIHER 2022-23,
peripheral interest to the great ma- ity University, were ranked the Top 3 under the broad heads of government
jority of school/college-leavers given and private, universities are ranked
that IIMs, NITs and IITs admit a To conduct the revised in separate league tables — multidis-
mere 2 percent of school-leavers and ciplinary, liberal arts and humanities,
graduates who write their entrance EWIHER 2022-23 survey, engineering & technology, all-wom-
examinations. 110 C-fore field personnel en, social sciences, medical & life
Last month (April), in our league interviewed 4,105 sample sciences and agriculture.
tables ranking government and “Feedback from our field person-
private Arts, Science and Com- respondents comprising nel who conduct one-on-one inter-
merce and private engineering & 2,236 university faculty, 1,047 views with sample respondents rating
technology undergrad colleges, we colleges and universities on several
ranked them in separate and distinct final year students and 822 parameters of higher education excel-
categories — private autonomous, industry leaders in 25 cities lence, indicated that respondents
government autonomous and Top countrywide were not comfortable with evaluating
100 non-autonomous undergrad liberal arts, engineering, social sci-

34 EDUCATIONWORLD MAY 2022