KOCHI: Some of the higher education institutions in Ernakulam district has climbed at least 10 ranks to secure a good position in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2024 ranking list, while some other institution went down from their position from the ranking list published last year.
Rajagiri College of Social Sciences and Cusat are the colleges and universities in the district that did well in the NIRF ranking.
In the overall ranking of higher education institutions in the country, Cusat bettered its rank from 63 in 2023 to 51 in 2024. Among the colleges, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences bettered its ranking from 30 in 2023 to 20 in 2024. Sacred Heart college in Thevara too bettered its ranking by climbing up to 48 from 72 in 2023.
However, some of the colleges in the district that did well last year fell a few rungs in the rank list. St Teresa's College which stood at 41 in the 2023 ranking fell to 46. Maharaja's College too performed poorly going down from 46 in the 2023 ranking to 53 this year.
Speaking to TNIE, P G Sankaran, Vice Chancellor of Cusat university says, "Various steps initiated by the university contributed towards the university bettering its rank greatly. The decision to recruit young faculty in the various departments of the university played a very big role in boosting our ranking. The other factor was the research culture of the university. We were able to increase our research publications. The university also received many national research projects."
Cusat also has been collaborating with industries as part of the industry-on-campus scheme of the state government. We have centres of excellence set up by Synthite, Geojit and many other companies. Then we have international students coming in. The teaching quality has improved. Even the quality of the research output has increased very much. All this has contributed to Cusat performing well in the NIRF rankings," says the VC.
Binoy Joseph, dean of Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, also credits the increase in research and publication for the huge leap in ranking. "We had 103 research publications in the last academic year. The year before it was around 70," he adds. According to him, the increase in the number of research publications happened due to the single-minded drive of the principal who launched Mission R-124. "Another thing that worked towards boosting our ranking was the large number of placements. We even saw our UG students getting placed in big companies," he adds.