Page 30 - EducationWorld May 2021

Cover Story

EW INDIA HIGHER EDUCATION RANKINGS 2021-22

TOP 500

ARTS, SCIENCE & COMMERCE

COLLEGES

With admission into highly subsidised top tier Centrally funded
universities and elite IITs, IIMs, NITs, likely to become more
difficult because of loss of learning in the pandemic year, the next
option is best private colleges and universities which provide near
equivalent higher education

Dilip Thakore

W ITH SCHOOLS, COLLEGES ter for grim speculation for which the country’s neta-babu

brotherhood with a stranglehold on Indian education — es-
and all education institu-
pecially higher education — has little time.
tions having suffered un-
Nevertheless, it’s clear that admission into the country’s
precedented lockdown con-
ditions for over a year since
few hundred top-ranked colleges and elite institutions such
mid-March 2020 because
of the Covid-19 pandemic,
than ever because most of them demand sky-high cut-offs
in higher secondary school-leaving examinations or high
and date of school-leaving as the IITs, IIMs, NITs is likely to become more difficult
class XII exams still uncertain, admission into undergradu- scores in rigorous entrance exams. Therefore with admis-
ate colleges is an issue clouded with uncertainty for the es- sion into relatively qualitative, subsidised public institu-
timated 16 million children in higher secondary education. tions restricted to a fraction of school and college leavers,
If at all class XII board exams are held within the next the next best option for the vast majority is the country’s
three months, they are likely to lack the rigour of previous top-ranked private colleges and universities which tend to
years. Ditto for students in undergrad programmes press- provide near equivalent higher education, albeit at rela-
ing on for higher studies. What all this portends for the tively high tuition prices.
future of India’s higher education institutions, the Indian Indeed informed public and academic opinion is almost
economy and already low-productivity India Inc, is a mat- unanimous that the country’s 25,375 private colleges and

30 EDUCATIONWORLD MAY 2021