BITS Pilani Research Questions Credibility Of NIRF Rankings
A research paper authored by Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Vice Chancellor V Ramgopal Rao raises questions on various aspects of the recent NIRF ranking released by the Union Education Ministry. The research is co-authored by Abhishek Singh, BITS Pilani, and published in the ‘Current Science’ journal.
As per the findings of the paper, the NIRF rankings lack a specific mechanism to directly assess the teaching quality. It overlooks crucial aspects such as classroom observations, alumni feedback, and student evaluations.
The paper titled, ‘Unpacking inconsistencies in the NIRF rankings, raises concerns over the reliability of the NIRF rankings due to several transparency and accountability issues caused by the inconsistencies identified through the study.
As per the study, the NIRF ranking sees “huge fluctuations in the rankings, overemphasis on bibliometrics neglecting non-traditional research outputs, subjective nature of perception rankings that introduces biases, challenges in the regional diversity metric, overlooking teaching quality, inadequate transparency in methodology, questions about data integrity and limited global benchmarking”.
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The negligence of thses methods hinders the comprehensive evaluation of teaching assessment and leads to an incomplete analysis of the educational prowess of the institution, the authors reported. It also neglect the practical dimension of teaching which is a crucial aspect of different disciplines.
The NIRF ranking system does not utilise a damping mechanism to spread large, interannual swings in data, unlike those used in international ranking systems, such as the QS World University Rankings. The absence of such normalization mechanism raises questions about the ability to remove anomalies and give error free analysis, that impacts the stability and reliability of the ranking, the study noted.
The institutional data and reporting may vary depending on its size, structure and resources. The lack of accurate verification methods and uniformity of the submitted data brings uncertainty into the rankings, it said.
The report said that without a standardized reporting practice, the ranking may favor institutions that present data in a favorable light instead of those genuinely excelling in academic parameters.
However, NIRF rankings have proved to be a valuable tool to assess and compare educational institutions in India, a cautious approach is essential, the report said.
